Cartesian and polar co-ordinates

Cartesian and polar co-ordinates Applications where polar co-ordinates would be used include terrestrial navigation with sonar-like devices, and those in engineering and science involving energy radiation patterns. Applications where Cartesian co-ordinates would be used include any navigation on a grid and anything involving raster graphics (i.e. bitmap – a dot matrix data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels). The ability to change from Cartesian to polar co-ordinates is vitally important when using complex numbers and their use in a.c. electrical circuit theory and with vector geometry.