Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-l] explanatory and response variables (was calibration )



On Aug 8, 2007, at 2:19 PM, Dan Crowe wrote:

Hi Michael,

These are both left-handed coordinate systems.

I thought so at first, too, and then realized (or at least decided) that Michael must have meant "forward" to mean "into the page--i.e., toward *his* front, not the page's. (I will opine that his language does seem a little confusing to me.)

The only issue I'd take with that is that I think it is *more* common to see the first system he describes with the x-axis running "backward"--what I'd prefer call "out of the page" (or even "forward"!)--and the y-axis running left to right.

(If anyone is still with me after all that. Congratulations.)

John Mallinckrodt
Cal Poly Pomona

Michael Edmiston wrote:

For a standard right-hand system I generally say the x-axis runs left to
right (right positive), the y-axis runs backward to forward (forward
positive), and the z-axis runs bottom to top (top positive).

In textbooks we often see x to the right, y pointing up, and z pointing
backwards.