Coördinate system
A coördinate system is an arbitrary system of labels for points within a space1 — which depends on a choice of origin and basis. A coördinate system may either be orthogonal, in which grid lines are perpendicular at every point, or non-orthogonal (also called skew).
The simplest orthogonal coördinate systems is Cartesian coördinates. Other common choices for three dimensional euclidean spaces include Cylindrical coördinates and Spherical coördinates.
Examples of cartesian, cylindrical, and spherical coördinatesystems (left to right)2
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Footnotes
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e.g. events in Minkowski spacetime, which depend on choice of observer. ↩
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2021. Covariant physics: From classical mechanics to general relativity and beyond, pp. 3–7 ↩