Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematical-methods-ii-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2019/10/a/solution

Use for cylindrical radius, to distinguish it from spherical radius . In cylindrical coordinates , the azimuthal angle is measured from positive in the horizontal plane:
Here and .
In spherical polar coordinates , take as the polar angle from positive and use the same azimuthal angle :
The ranges are , and . The radial direction has horizontal projection of length , which explains the extra factor in . The azimuth is undefined on the polar axis, and both angles are nonunique at the origin; these are coordinate degeneracies rather than geometric singularities.
Figure 1.
Cylindrical and spherical polar coordinates; the spherical polar angle is measured from positive z.
The same point and its projection onto the horizontal plane are shown in both panels. The cylindrical radius is the projection length; the spherical radius is the distance from the origin. Details.

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