Spherical Harmonic
- To: mathgroup at yoda.ncsa.uiuc.edu
- Subject: Spherical Harmonic
- From: prs at cook.whoi.edu (Peter R. Shaw)
- Date: Thu, 20 Sep 90 10:33:48 EDT
Hi, folks,
I'm using spherical harmonics ...
I want to access Ylm for l=2, m=0. No azimuthal dependence,
so I set phi=0, and want to look at the theta dependence.
So, when I type:
SphericalHarmonicY[2,0,theta,0]
I get the satisfying result:
2
Sqrt[5] (-1 + 3 Cos[theta] )
----------------------------
4 Sqrt[Pi]
BUT, when I try to access theta=0, what I get is
SphericalHarmonicY[2,0,0,0]
0
General::ind: Indeterminate expression 0 encountered.
0
0 Sqrt[5]
----------
2 Sqrt[Pi]
Am I nuts or what? Cos[0]=1, so Cos[theta]^2 = 1,
so I should get
Sqrt[5] (-1 + 3 )
------------------
4 Sqrt[Pi]
which evaluates to 1/2 Sqrt[5/Pi], and does not
involve anything like 0^0. None of the constants
are dependent on theta.
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Peter R. Shaw pshaw at aqua.whoi.edu
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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