Co-ordinate Systems

CO-ORDINATE SYSTEMS:
Co-ordinate systems are needed to express vectors in its components.
there are three co-ordinates systems namely

1. Cartesian co-ordinate system or rectangular co-ordinate systems
2. Cylindrical co-ordinate system 
3. Spherical co-ordinate system

CARTESIAN OR RECTANGULAR CO-ORDINATE SYSTEM:

• This system has three co-ordinates axis represented as x,y,z

Representing point in a rectangular co-ordinate system:
A point in rectangular co-ordinate system is located by three co-ordinates namely x,y,z co-ordinates

 

Fig. Representation of a point in rectangular co-ordinate system

where

x1, y1, z1 are the magnitude along x,y and z respectively

ax^, ay^,az^ are the respective unit vectors

The point P can be reached by moving from  origin the distance x1 direction then distance y1 and finally distance z1 direction, hence point P is denoted as P(x1,y1,z1)