I was helping Nathaniel with his Algebra today when we came upon a problem about converting from rectangular form to polar form. Suddenly it occurred to me, why is it called polar form? I mean rectangular form I get, but Polar Form, how does that work?!? It doesn’t have any polars. It doesn’t even look like a polar! Did they start using this system exclusively in the North or South Pole? Or maybe some guy named Polar invented it, or perhaps polar bears just really love using this coordinate system.
