ABSTRACT
Spherical harmonics enter our discussion as the eigenfunctions of the angular part of the Laplacian in spherical coordinates. These functions are of basic importance, not only for the applications in classical physics which are the main focus of the present work, but also in quantum physics where they form the wave functions describing orbital angular momentum. Nearly every calculation dealing with an atomic, molecular, nuclear, or elementary particle system employs spherical harmonics in one way or another. That a superposition of solutions is also a solution follows from the linear homogeneous form of Laplace’s equation. To see that is a general solution requires more effort.
