This small group activity is designed to help upper division undergraduate students work out expressions for velocity and acceleration in polar coordinates. Students work in small groups to address the position dependence of curvilinear basis vectors in order to find general expressions for velocity and acceleration in polar coordinates. The whole class wrap-up discussion focuses on building connections between the students' geometric understanding of position, velocity and acceleration vectors and an algebraic formulation in polar (curvilinear) coordinates.

This material is part of the Paradigms in Physics project at Oregon State University. This work promotes the use of active student learning in upper division physics courses. Both learning materials and learning strategies are provided to help both students and instructors.