I am trying to make the draggable point on the rectangular graph move around the circle on the polar graph, I have the point transferring, but cannot get the point to move like a polar. It is on screen 2 3.14 day 1: Polar Graphing -- circle and limacons • Activity by Katie Statham
I love the connection between rectangular and polar coordinates on this activity!
I think the issue may just be in cell 6 of the polar graph. Unfortunately, even if the desmos graph is using the polar axes, it still interprets points as if they’re given in cartesian coordinates, so you still have to translate the polar coordinates back to cartesian coordinates. I think the edit in the following image should fix it!
That helped, but since I am using tan^-1 to define theta, it is not working for some angles. I am trying to re-create a ti file I have that looks like this
Ah, I see! I was able to get a version of it working just by using the x_1 and y_1 as the theta and r variables directly (without computation of a theta_1). I have it on slide 2 of a copy of your activity:
You also might be interested in the activity talked about in this post Side by Side Graphs Polar/Rectangular which also does some interesting things with cartesian to polar coordinates!
If you just want to look at what I did on the graphs, this is the cartesian graph:
and the polar graph:
Thank you! That works well, I appreciate your help.
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