Polar Coordinates: Example 3: Cartesian to Polar

In this video I go over another example on Polar Coordinates, and this times show how to convert Cartesian coordinates to their polar counterpart. The difference between doing this, as opposed to converting polar to Cartesian coordinates is that we must be careful in selecting the correct quadrant when deciding on the angle. This is because the tanθ and the r^2 = x^2 + y^2 equations give two values for θ for when θ is between the range from 0 to 2pi. Also, the nature of the circular polar coordinate system, and the fact that we can use negative angles and negative distances, means that we can in fact write any Cartesian point into infinite representations when in Polar Coordinate form. This is a great example on seeing the differences in the steps taken when converting Cartesian to polar coordinates when compared with my last video, in which I converted polar to Cartesian coordinates, so make sure to watch this video!

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