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Easy addition of polar vectors?
10-28-2023, 09:34 PM
Post: #1
Easy addition of polar vectors?
I'm trying to add polar vectors, which is easily accomplished on the 50g or 48 series using cylindrical or spherical mode. Specifically, I'm learning the Prime by duplicating example 3 on page 178 of the HP48SX manual. In this example, we want to add three vectors (I'll use "<" to represent the angle symbol):

[170 <143] + [185 <62] + [100 <-99] = [178.937 <111.149]

This resultant is then resolved along the 175 degree line by taking the dot product with [1 <175] to get 78.86.

I can achieve the first part using a ridiculous number of conversions with the rectangular_coordinates() and polar_coordinates() commands. The last part is even worse because I have to convert the resultant and the [1 <175] vector back to rectangular coordinates and the copy and paste both of these into the dot() command.

This seems much more complicated than it should be to do a routine, basic engineering calculation. Am I missing something obvious? Also, I can only do this in CAS. I'd prefer RPN, but this seems out of the question.

Thanks.

- Bruce
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Easy addition of polar vectors? - byoung - 10-28-2023 09:34 PM



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