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Del in cylindrical and spherical coordinates
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Nabla in cylindrical and spherical coordinates)
This is a list of some vector calculus formulae of general use in working with standard coordinate systems.
Table with the del operator in cylindrical and spherical coordinates
Operation Cartesian coordinates (x,y,z) Cylindrical coordinates (,,z) Spherical coordinates (r,,)
Definition
of
coordinates
A vector field
Gradient
Divergence
Curl
Laplace
operator
or
Differential
displacement
Differential
normal area
Differential
volume
Non-trivial calculation rules:
1. (Laplacian)
2.
3.
4. (using Lagrange's formula for the cross product)
5.
Remarks
1 of 2 10/20/2007 7:08 PM
Del in cylindrical and spherical coordinates - Wikipedia, the free encycl... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabla_in_cylindrical_and_spherical_coordi...
This page uses standard physics notation; some (American mathematics) sources define as the angle from the z-axis instead of .
The function atan2(y, x) is used instead of the mathematical function arctan(y/x) due to its domain and image. The classical arctan(y/x) has an image of (-/2,
+/2), whereas atan2(y, x) is defined to have an image of (-, ].
See also
Orthogonal coordinates
Curvilinear coordinates
Vector fields in cylindrical and spherical coordinates
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Categories: Vector calculus | Coordinate systems
This page was last modified 11:17, 11 October 2007.
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2 of 2 10/20/2007 7:08 PM
