A Question about Unit Vectors of Cylindrical Coordinates

[sams]

I wrote the equations of the Nabla, the divergence, the curl, and the Laplacian operators in cylindrical coordinates $(ρ,φ,z)$. I was wondering how to define the direction of the unit vector $\hat{φ}$. Can we obtain $\hat{φ}$ by evaluating the cross-product of $\hat{ρ}$ and $\hat{z}$ or by using the right-hand rule?

Thank you so much for your help...

 

[PeroK]

I wrote the equations of the Nabla, the divergence, the curl, and the Laplacian operators in cylindrical coordinates $(ρ,φ,z)$. I was wondering how to define the direction of the unit vector $\hat{φ}$. Can we obtain $\hat{φ}$ by evaluating the cross-product of $\hat{ρ}$ and $\hat{z}$ or by using the right-hand rule?

Thank you so much for your help...

It's all here:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CylindricalCoordinates.html

$\phi$ (or $\theta$ to mathematicians) is usually defined to be anti-clockwise looking down the z-axis.

 

[sams]

Thank you @PeroK for your help