Question

The numerical system that describes the location of an object by numerically expressing its distance from a fixed point along 3-axes is called:

Answer 1

Answer: Cartesian Coordinate System

The Cartesian Coordinate System is named after the French Mathematician $\textsf{Ren\'e Descartes}$.

In three dimensions, we take three mutually perpendicular axes arbitrarily.

We can chose the axes as per our wish, but they must be all perpendicular to each other.

We name these axes as the X-axis, Y-axis and the Z-axis respectively.

Also, we call the intersection of these axes as the Origin, denoted by O.

To describe any point in space, we measure the distance of the point from Origin along these three axes.

As for a real life example, consider a room. I will call one corner of the room as the origin.

I am standing in the room with a ball in my hand. I can say that the ball is 1 metres from the left wall, 2 metres from the wall on my back, and 1 metres from the floor.

Then, I specified the position of the ball using three coordinates, which I denote as (1,2,1).

Thus, we take three coordinate axes, name them X, Y and Z.

We measure the distance of the object from Origin along these three axes, and name them x, y, z. Then we can denote the position of the object as (x,y,z)

This is all about the Cartesian Coordinate System in three spatial dimensions.