Laplacian in various coordinate systems

The recent post on the wave equation on a disk showed that the Laplace operator has a different form in polar coordinates than it does in rectangular coordinates. In general, the Laplacian is not simply the sum of the second derivatives with respect to each variable. Mathematica has a function, unsurprisingly called Laplacian, that will […] The post Laplacian in various coordinate systems first appeared on John D. Cook....

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