Chapter 2. Vectors and the geographic （第二章。）.pdf

Chapter 2. Vectors and the geographic coordinate system © 1988 - 2017 by Vincent S. Cronin. Revised 31 January 2017. 2.1 Getting ready to learn In this and in subsequent chapters, it is assumed that the reader has access to a computer connected to the web that has a functional copy of Mathematica by Wolfram Research. The current version of this chapter was developed in Mathematica version 8 and was revised in version 10. The Wolfram/Mathematica learning center is accessible at /support/learn/, and the “hands-on start to Mathematica” is available at /broadcast/screencasts/handsonstart/. Informative web documents accessible from Wolfram MathWorld (/) are listed after the references at the end of this chapter. Developing the ability to code in a computer language is, in the author’s opinion, a necessity for any student in science, technology, engineering or mathematics. 2.2 Position vectors and the geographic coordinate system For any point Q , the geographic-Cartesian coordinates {xQ , yQ , zQ } can be determined from the standard geographic coordinates (latQ , longQ ) as follows: xQ = cos[latQ] cos[longQ] yQ = cos[latQ] sin[longQ] zQ = sin[latQ] where positive longitude is measured east of the Prime Meridian, west longitudes and south latitudes are negative numbers (Fig. 2.1). Rather than explicitly refer to the axes in the conventional way, using the letters “x, y and z,” we sometimes use the numbers 1, 2 and 3 to indicate the x, y and z axes, respectively. For example, the coordinates of a location vector to a point Q might be represented as {xQ , yQ , zQ } or equivalently as {Q 1, Q 2 , Q 3 }. Figure 2.1. The geographic–Cartesian coordinate system. The ZGEOG axis passes through t