Acceleration in Spherical Coordinates

Saibal Mitra
There are dierent ways to solve this problem:
1 A lot of brute force
This is useful to practice manipulations using inner products, dierentiation,
chain rule etc. etc. I will give a short outline but I wont work out the problem
using this approach. What you do is you write down the fact that the position
vector is given by:
r = r r (1)
Then you dierentiate w.r.t. time:
dr
dt
=
d
dt
(r r) =
dr
dt
r + r
d r
dt
(2)
We now need to nd out how to express the vector
d r
dt
in terms of the unit
vectors r,

and

. What you can do is to use the denitions of the unit vectors
in terms of the Cartesian unit vectors

i,

j and

k. You rst write:
d r
dt
=
r
r
dr
dt
+
r

d
dt
+
r

d
dt
(3)
Then you carry out the dierentiations of the unit vector r. The result is some
linear combination of the unit vectors

i,

j and

k. You then express that vector
back in terms of r,

and

using the general rule:

F =
_

F r
_
r +
_

_

+
_

_

(4)
So, it is straightforward to do this. To nd the second derivative you must
dierentiate again and now you also need to know the derivatives of the other
unit vectors.
2 Somewhat less brute force
Notice that in the above approach we didnt make use of geometric interpretation
of the unit vectors. You can simplify things by making use of that. Lets try to
nd a shortcut to nding the derivatives of the unit vectors. First, notice that
none of the unit vectors depend on r. The derivatives of r are:
r

=

(5)
1
and
r

= sin()

(6)
The rst derivative is completely analogous to a two dimensional problem with
polar coordinates where the unit radial vector is dierentiated to the angular
variable. The second case can also be translated to this problem by projecting
r on the plane orthogonal to the z-axis. If you are rotating around the z-axis
with the angle , then the component of r along the z-axis doesnt change. The
component pointing orthogonal to this axis behaves in the same way as in the
previous case. This is where the factor sin() comes from.
Using similar geometric considerations you easily nd that:

= r (7)
and

= cos()

(8)

= 0 (9)
and

= sin() r cos()

(10)
So, you now know the expression for the velocity (2):
dr
dt
=
dr
dt
r + r
_
d
dt

+ sin()
d
dt

_
(11)
You have to dierentiate this again to get the expression for the acceleration:
d
2
r
dt
2
=
_
d
2
r
dt
2
r
_
d
dt
_
2
r sin
2
()
_
d
dt
_
2
_
r
+
_
2
dr
dt
d
dt
+ r
d
2

dt
2
r sin() cos()
_
d
dt
_
2
_

+
_
2 sin()
dr
dt
d
dt
+ 2r cos()
d
dt
d
dt
+ r sin()
d
2

dt
2
_

(12)
3 Fast and easy way
In Cartesian coordinates the components of the acceleration vector are just the
second derivatives of the components of the position vector, because the unit
vectors dont depend on the position. This is not the case in general as we have
seen above. This means that Newtons second law

F = ma becomes complicated
when written out in components, unless you work in Cartesian coordinates.
Fortunately, there exists a formulation of the second law which looks the same
in arbitrary coordinate systems: the Lagrangian formulation. The Lagrangian
L is dened as the dierence of the kinetic and potential energy. The motion
of a particle is such that the action
_
t
2
t
1
L
_
r,
dr
dt
_
dt is stationary (a.k.a. the
2
least action principle). To see this, calculate the action for a slightly perturbed
trajectory r(t) + (t) and expand to rst order in . The action is supposed to
be stationary for xed starting and end points, so (t
1
) = (t
2
) = 0.
Expanding the Lagrangian gives:
L
_
r + ,
dr
dt
+
d
dt
_
= L
_
r,
dr
dt
_
+

j
L
r
j

j
+

j
L
r
j

j
(13)
Here the dot denotes the time derivative and the index j denotes a component
of the position vector. If you integrate this over time from t
1
to t
2
and do a
partial integration of the last term to move the time derivative from to
L
r
j
(the boundary terms in this partial integration are zero, because is zero at t
1
and t
2
), you nd that the change in the action is:
_
t
2
t
1

j
_
L
r
j

d
dt
L
r
j
_

j
(t) dt (14)
The action is stationary if this is zero for all perturbations . You can choose
all the
j
zero except for one particular index j and that one you can choose to
be peaked around some arbitrary time t and almost zero everywhere else. This
must yield zero, so you can conclude that:
L
r
j

d
dt
L
r
j
= 0 (15)
for all j and at all times. If you insert in here:
L =
1
2
m

j
r
2
j
U(r) (16)
you nd that the derivative w.r.t. r
j
yields the j-th component of the acceler-
ation time the mass, while the derivative w.r.t. r
j
yields the j-th component
of the force, and you regain Newtons second law. The equation (15) has the
same form in any coordinate system, simply because it expresses that the action
is stationary. If it is stationary in one coordinate system it is also stationary
in another. If you dene functions q
i
of the component of r like e.g. the two
angular variables and the radius in spherical coordinates, and write L in terms
of the new variables, then the above derivation carries through in the same way,
with
i
now the perturbation in q
i
. Therefore, we have in general:
L
q
j

d
dt
L
q
j
= 0 (17)
To nd the acceleration in spherical coordinates, we can just formally work
out equation (17) in these coordinates and read-o the components of the ac-
celeration. You only need to know what the component gradient vector is in
spherical coordinates (minus the gradient of the potential is the force). This is
easy since you have:
dU = U dr (18)
But you also have:
dU =
U
r
dr +
U

d +
U

d (19)
3
If you use that the innitesimal displacement vector dr in spherical coordinates
is given by:
dr = dr r + rd

+ r sin() d

(20)
and compare (18) to (19) you nd:
U =
U
r
r +
1
r
U

+
1
r sin()
U

(21)
If you now insert in (17)
L =
1
2
m
_
r
2
+ r
2

2
+ r
2
sin
2
()

2
_
U(r) (22)
and use that the force is minus the gradient of U, you obtain the result Eq. (12) in
a matter of minutes. We can also use the Lagrangian formalism to easily derive
the expression of the ctitious force in a rotating spherical reference frame.
Suppose we choose the rotation axis to be the z-axis and let the rotating frame
rotate with angular velocity along that axis. The coordinate in the non-
rotating reference frame is then obtained from the coordinate in the rotating
reference by adding t. This means that we must replace in the Lagrangian
(22) + t. If we now work out the Euler-Lagrange equations (17) and
identify the extra terms as the ctitious force in the usual way, we obtain:
F
r
= mr sin
2
()
_

2
+ 2

_
F

= mr sin() cos()
_

2
+ 2

_
F

= 2m
_
r sin() + r cos()

_
(23)
4