Wolfram Error - Spherical Unit Vectors Check

  • Thread starter Thread starter Syrus
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Mistake
Syrus
Messages
213
Reaction score
0

Homework Statement



Folks, I think Wolfram has a mistake published here: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SphericalCoordinates.html

Their spherical unit vectors (for theta and phi) seem to be erroneous. Can someone double check this?


Homework Equations





The Attempt at a Solution

 
Physics news on Phys.org
Syrus said:

Homework Statement



Folks, I think Wolfram has a mistake published here: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SphericalCoordinates.html

Their spherical unit vectors (for theta and phi) seem to be erroneous. Can someone double check this?


Homework Equations





The Attempt at a Solution


I doubt it's wrong. But there is more than one convention for what theta and phi mean in spherical coordinates. mathworld explains which one it's using. What's yours?
 
There are two things I don't understand about this problem. First, when finding the nth root of a number, there should in theory be n solutions. However, the formula produces n+1 roots. Here is how. The first root is simply ##\left(r\right)^{\left(\frac{1}{n}\right)}##. Then you multiply this first root by n additional expressions given by the formula, as you go through k=0,1,...n-1. So you end up with n+1 roots, which cannot be correct. Let me illustrate what I mean. For this...
Back
Top