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Example Questions
Example Question #17 : Convert Rectangular Coordinates To Polar Coordinates And Vice Versa
Convert the rectangular coordinates to polar coordinates:
To convert from rectangular coordinates to polar coordinates :
Using the rectangular coordinates given by the question,
The polar coordinates are
Example Question #141 : Polar Coordinates And Complex Numbers
How could you express in polar coordinates?
These rectangular coordinates form a right triangle whose side adjacent to the angle is 7.5, and whose opposite side is 4. This means we can find the angle using tangent:
This would be the angle if these coordinates were in the first quadrant. Since both x and y are negative, this point is in the third. We can adjust the angle by adding , giving us .
Now we just need to find the radius - this will be the hypotenuse of the triangle:
take the square root of both sides
So, our polar coordinates are
Example Question #141 : Polar Coordinates And Complex Numbers
Which coordinates would not describe a point at ?
Plotting the point listed gives this triangle:
Using Pythagorean Theorem or just knowing that this is a Pythagorean Triple, we get that the hypotenuse/ radius in polar coordinates is 5.
To find that angle, we can use tangent:
That's the angle in quadrant I. This point is in quadrant IV, so we can figure out the angle by subtracting from :
We can also find the corresponding angle in quadrant II by subtracting from , and the corresponding angle in quadrant III by adding , giving us these angles:
The point originally converted to polar coordinates is , so we know that works.
If the radius is negative, we want the angle to be at 2.4981, so the point works.
Since our angle 5.6397 is exactly 0.6435 radians below the x-axis, the point will work.
Similarly, the negative version of 2.4981 would be -3.7851, so
works.
The one that does not work has a positive 5 radius and 0.6435 as the angle, which would be located in quadrant I.
Example Question #18 : Convert Rectangular Coordinates To Polar Coordinates And Vice Versa
Which polar coordinates conicide with the rectangular point ?
Since the x and y coordinates indicate the same distance, we know that the triangle formed has two angles measuring .
The ratio of the legs to the hypotenuse is always , so since the legs both have a distance of 6, the hypotenuse/ radius for our polar coordinates is .
Since the x-coordinate is negative but the y-coordinate is positive, this angle is located in the second quadrant.
, so our angle is .
This makes our coordinates
.
Example Question #71 : Polar Coordinates
Which polar-coordinate point is not the same as the rectangular point ?
Plotting this point creates a triangle in quadrant I:
Using our knowledge of Special Right Triangles, we can conclude that the angle is and the radius/hypotenuse of this triangle is . Our polar coordinates are therefore , so we can eliminate that as a choice since we know it works.
Looking at the unit circle [or just the relevant parts] can give us a sense of what happens when the angles and/or the radii are negative:
Now we can easily see that the angle would correspond with our angle of , so works.
We can see that if our radius is negative we'd want to start off at the angle , so the point works.
As we can see from looking at this excerpt from the unit circle, another way of writing the angle would be to write , so the point works.
The only one that does not work would be because that would place us in quadrant II rather than I like we want.
Example Question #72 : Polar Coordinates
Which of the following is a set of polar coordinates for the point with the rectangular coordinates .
The relation between polar coordinates and rectangular coordinates is given by and .
You can plug in each of the choices for and and see which pair gives the rectangular coordinate .
The answer turns out to be .
Alternatively, you can find by the equation
, thus
.
As for finding , you can use the equation
, and since
.
Thus, the polar coordinate is .
Example Question #21 : Convert Rectangular Coordinates To Polar Coordinates And Vice Versa
Convert the point to polar form
First, find r using pythagorean theorem,
Then we can find theta by doing the inverse tangent of y over x:
Since this point is in quadrant II, add 180 degrees to get
Example Question #22 : Convert Rectangular Coordinates To Polar Coordinates And Vice Versa
Convert the following rectangular coordinates to polar coordinates:
To convert from rectangular coordinates to polar coordinates :
Using the rectangular coordinates given by the question,
The polar coordinates are
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