Equations of Motion for a Projectile in Polar Coordinates

Rhett Allain
3 min readMar 4, 2019

Why? There is no why.

Suppose a ball is shot at an angle θ with an initial velocity v 0. What will the motion be like in polar coordinates?

First, let me start with Newton’s 2nd Law in polar coordinates.

Where do those come from? Here is my derivation of the acceleration in polar coordinates. For fun.

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Rhett Allain

Physics faculty, science blogger of all things geek. Technical Consultant for CBS MacGyver and MythBusters. WIRED blogger.