Coordinate system

"Coordinate" redirects here. For coordinates on the Earth, see Spatial reference system. For other uses, see Coordinate (disambiguation).
The spherical coordinate system is commonly used in physics. It assigns three numbers (known as coordinates) to every point in Euclidean space: radial distance r, polar angle θ (theta), and azimuthal angle φ (phi). The symbol ρ (rho) is often used instead of r.

In geometry, a coordinate system is a system that uses one or more numbers, or coordinates, to uniquely determine the position of the points or other geometric elements on a manifold such as Euclidean space.[1][2] The order of the coordinates is significant, and they are sometimes identified by their position in an ordered tuple and sometimes by a letter, as in "the x-coordinate". The coordinates are taken to be real numbers in elementary mathematics, but may be complex numbers or elements of a more abstract system such as a commutative ring. The use of a coordinate system allows problems in geometry to be translated into problems about numbers and vice versa; this is the basis of analytic geometry.[3]

  1. ^ Woods p. 1
  2. ^ Weisstein, Eric W. "Coordinate System". MathWorld.
  3. ^ Weisstein, Eric W. "Coordinates". MathWorld.