Generalized Coordinates

Generalized coordinates are useful when calculating Lagrangians or Hamiltonians. The term itself, refers to the parameters that describe the configuration of a system. For instance, to describe the position of a point on a circle, one could use its rectangular (Cartesian) coordinates, spherical coordinates, or cylindrical coordinates. Buth with generalized coordinates a reference doesn’t need to be made to the specific coordinate system, rather it could be abstracted into something more general as coordinates \((q_{1}, q_{2},…q_{n})\). ...