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I'm trying to solve a problem which includes a spinning object and I want to find it's velocity vector with respect to an object moving in a straight line on the the x axis with constant velocity.

I can represent the spinning object's velocity in cartesian coordinates and subtract from it the velocity of the moving object. But that is a method that doesn't scale if I have a more complex spinning shape. Is there a way to convert the object moving in a straight line to polar coordinates?

What is the x basis vector in polar vector form?

Edit: figured it out. The relation I was looking for was:

$\hat{x}=cos(\theta)\hat{r}-sin(\theta)\hat{\theta}$

Yizhar Amir
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  • Are you familiar with the Jacobian matrix? The relation between the basis vectors in polar and Cartesian coordinates is closely related - you can construct it from partial derivatives of one set of variables with respect to the other - but the matrix must have determinant 1 (it's orthogonal). –  Dec 13 '18 at 17:45
  • It's a lot less sophisticated. I figured it out and edited the post. – Yizhar Amir Dec 13 '18 at 18:11

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