Problem

Suppose a point has polar coordinates $\left(4, \frac{2 \pi}{3}\right)$, with the angle measured in radians.

Answer

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Answer

The Cartesian coordinates of the point are approximately \(\boxed{(-2.0, 3.46)}\).

Steps

Step 1 :Suppose a point has polar coordinates \(\left(4, \frac{2 \pi}{3}\right)\), with the angle measured in radians.

Step 2 :The question is asking for the Cartesian coordinates of the point. The conversion from polar coordinates to Cartesian coordinates is given by the formulas \(x = r \cos(\theta)\) and \(y = r \sin(\theta)\), where \(r\) is the distance from the origin to the point and \(\theta\) is the angle measured counterclockwise from the positive x-axis. In this case, \(r = 4\) and \(\theta = \frac{2 \pi}{3}\).

Step 3 :Using these formulas, we find that \(x = -1.9999999999999991\) and \(y = 3.464101615137755\).

Step 4 :However, due to the limitations of floating point arithmetic, the x-coordinate is not exactly -2, but very close to it. We can round the coordinates to a reasonable number of decimal places to get a more precise answer.

Step 5 :After rounding, we find that \(x = -2.0\) and \(y = 3.46\).

Step 6 :The Cartesian coordinates of the point are approximately \(\boxed{(-2.0, 3.46)}\).

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