ABSTRACT
Applications of 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, for example 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. The chapter explains Cartesian to polar co-ordinates and polar to Cartesian co-ordinates. Another name for Cartesian co-ordinates is rectangular co-ordinates. Many scientific notation calculators possess polar and rectangular functions.
