Maple Usage

There are several ways you can have Maple give a plot in polar coordinates. (Since $\theta$ is not a usual keyboard symbol, we will use t to designate the angle.) You can load a polar plotting routine and use it.

with(plots,polarplot);
polarplot(f(t),t=a..b);

You could also use plot and designate that the plot is polar.

plot([f(t),t,t=a..b],coords=polar);

Or you could load the CalcP package and use one of its routines.

with(CalcP);
ParamPlot([f(t),t],t=a..b,coords=polar);

Make sure you click inside the area between the two axes. A tool bar should pop up for you to use. ParamPlot makes use of the Maple animate command. With this you can see the curve traced out in ``slow motion" as t (really $\theta$) increases. This can be useful in figuring out the t range needed to trace out a given loop of a complicated graph. When the plot screen appears, click on the play box to get the graph. Click on the ? box to see the labels for the various boxes.

It is also possible to do more than one polar plot at a time.

plot({[f1(t),t,t=a..b],[f2(t),t,t=c..d]},coords=polar);