BASIS VECTORS IN SPHERICAL POLAR

COORDINATES
Sreerag Kumar
March 11, 2019

By writing vectors down in thier component form in a particular coordi-

nate system Z n , we express vectors as scaled sums of the unit vectors in that
coordinate system. The scaling factors or ’scalars’ are called the components
of the vector in that particular coordinate system.
Given a vector
A = A(Z n )
it can be written in component form as

A = A1 eb1 + A2 eb2 + A3 eb3 + . . . + An ebn

where
∂A(Z n )
en =
∂Z n
are the basis vectors of the coordinate system and the n-tuple

(A1 , A2 , A3 , . . . , An )

are called the components of the vector.

In the normal 3-Dimensional Euclidean coordinate system, we represent vec-
tors as
~ 3 ) = Axbi + Ay bj + Az kb
A = A(R
To change from cartesian to spherical polar coordinate system, we have our
transformation relation

Ax = A sin(φ) cos(θ), Ay = A sin(φ) sin(θ), Az = A cos(φ) (1)

1
Then a vector could be written as

A = A sin(φ) cos(θ)bi + A sin(φ) sin(θ)bj + A cos(φ)kb (2)

To find the basis vectors in spherical polar coordinates, we take the partial
derivatives of the vector A with respect to the three coordinates i.e,

∂A(A, θ, φ)
eA = (3)
∂A
∂
= (A sin(φ) cos(θ)bi + A sin(φ) sin(θ)bj + A cos(φ)k)
b
∂A

= sin(φ) cos(θ)bi + sin(φ) sin(θ)bj + cos(φ)kb

similarly,
∂A(A, θ, φ)
eθ = (4)
∂θ
∂
= (A sin(φ) cos(θ)bi + A sin(φ) sin(θ)bj + A cos(φ)k)
b
∂θ
= −A sin(φ) sin(θ)bi + A sin(φ) cos(θ)bj
and
∂A(A, θ, φ)
eφ = (5)
∂φ
∂
= (A sin(φ) cos(θ)bi + A sin(φ) sin(θ)bj + A cos(φ)kb
∂φ
= A cos(φ) cos(θ)bi + A cos(φ) sin(θ)bj − A sin(φ)kb
After doing these simple calculations, we have derived the expressions for the
basis vectors in spherical polar coordinates in terms of the familiar cartesian
basis vectors.

From these expressions, it can be noted that unlike the basis vectors
in the cartesian coordinate system, which are global, the basis vectors in
the spherical polar system are local. Which means the basis vectors change
continuously as a function of position. Also, the spherical polar basis vectors
form only an orthogonal system unlike the orthonormal system in the case
of the cartesian coordinate system.