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Further Maths Revision: Polar Coordinates

My A level further maths sessions this week included revision of polar coordinates. In this example from WJEC’s specification, the task is to calculate the area enclosed between the initial line and the curve. This is done using integral calculus.

The area enclosed by a polar curve

The polar coordinate system allows us to specify the position of a point in the 2D plane by its distance from the origin and the angle  made with the horizontal -axis. This allows us to explore curves such as the cardioid on the home page or the clover leaf below.

A clover leaf created using polar coordinates

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