 Solution

Differentiate the position vector with respect to the three coordinates to obtain the coordinate basis vectors:The chain rule gives $d\mathbf{x}={\mathbf{h}}_{u}du+{\mathbf{h}}_{v}dv+{\mathbf{h}}_{\varphi }d\varphi$. The scale factors of orthogonal coordinates are the corresponding norms:Direct dot products give ${\mathbf{h}}_u\cdot {\mathbf{h}}_v=uv-uv=0$, ${\mathbf{h}}_u\cdot {\mathbf{h}}_{\varphi }=0$, and ${\mathbf{h}}_v\cdot {\mathbf{h}}_{\varphi }=0$. Thus the parabolic coordinates are orthogonal wherever the coordinate vectors are nondegenerate. Their degeneracy on $uv=0$ is the usual axis degeneracy of the azimuthal coordinate.