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In coordinate-free terms, the gradient of a function () may be defined by: d f = ∇ f ⋅ d r {\displaystyle df=\nabla f\cdot d\mathbf {r} } where d f {\displaystyle df} is the total infinitesimal change in f {\displaystyle f} for an infinitesimal displacement d r {\displaystyle d\mathbf {r} } , and is seen to be maximal when d r ...
In Cartesian coordinates, the divergence of a continuously differentiable vector field = + + is the scalar-valued function: = = (, , ) (, , ) = + +. As the name implies, the divergence is a (local) measure of the degree to which vectors in the field diverge.
This article uses the standard notation ISO 80000-2, which supersedes ISO 31-11, for spherical coordinates (other sources may reverse the definitions of θ and φ): . The polar angle is denoted by [,]: it is the angle between the z-axis and the radial vector connecting the origin to the point in question.
In three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system with coordinates (,,) and standard ... The magnitude of the gradient is the value of this steepest slope.
A Cartesian coordinate surface in this space is a coordinate plane; for example z = 0 defines the x-y plane. ... The expressions for the gradient, divergence, ...
Vectors are defined in cylindrical coordinates by (ρ, φ, z), where ρ is the length of the vector projected onto the xy-plane, φ is the angle between the projection of the vector onto the xy-plane (i.e. ρ) and the positive x-axis (0 ≤ φ < 2π), z is the regular z-coordinate. (ρ, φ, z) is given in Cartesian coordinates by:
These scaling functions h i are used to calculate differential operators in the new coordinates, e.g., the gradient, the Laplacian, the divergence and the curl. A simple method for generating orthogonal coordinates systems in two dimensions is by a conformal mapping of a standard two-dimensional grid of Cartesian coordinates (x, y).
To accommodate for the change of coordinates the magnitude of the Jacobian determinant arises as a multiplicative factor within the integral. This is because the n-dimensional dV element is in general a parallelepiped in the new coordinate system, and the n-volume of a parallelepiped is the determinant of its edge vectors.