Instead of Cartesian coordinates, when equations of motion are expressed in a curvilinear coordinate system, Christoffel symbols appear in the acceleration of a particle expressed in this coordinate system, as described below in more detail. Consider description of a particle motion from the viewpoint of an inertial frame of reference in curvilinear coordinates. Suppose the position of a point P in Cartesian coordinates is (x, y, z) and in curvilinear coordinates is (q 1, q 2. q 3). Then functions exist that relate these descriptions: x = x ( q 1 , q 2 , q 3 ) ; q 1 = q 1 ( x , y , z ) , and so forth. (The number of dimensions may be larger than three.) An important aspect of such coordinate systems is the element of arc length that allows distances to be determined. If the curvilinear coordinates form an orthogonal coordinate system, the element of arc length ds is expressed as: d s 2 = ∑ ∑ k = 1 d ( h k ) 2 ( d q k ) 2 , where the quantities h k are called scale factors. A change dq k in q k causes a displacement h k dq k along the coordinate line for q k. At a point P, we place unit vectors e k each tangent to a coordinate line of a variable q k. Then any vector can be expressed in terms of these basis vectors, for example, from an inertial frame of reference, the position vector of a moving particle r located at time t at position P becomes: r = ∑ ∑ k = 1 d q k e k , where q k is the vector dot product of r and e k. The velocity v of a particle at P, can be expressed at P as: v = ∑ ∑ k = 1 d v k e k = d d t r = ∑ ∑ k = 1 d q ˙ ˙ k e k + ∑ ∑ k = 1 d q k e k ˙ ˙ , where v k is the vector dot product of v and e k, and over dots indicate time differentiation. The time derivatives of the basis vectors can be expressed in terms of the scale factors introduced above. for example: ∂ ∂ ∂ ∂ q 2 e 1 = − − e 2 1 h 2 ∂ ∂ h 1 ∂ ∂ q 2 − − e 3 1 h 3 ∂ ∂ h 1 ∂ ∂ q 3 , or, in general ∂ ∂ e j ∂ ∂ q k = ∑ ∑ n = 1 d Γ Γ n k j e n , in which the coefficients of the unit vectors are the Christoffel symbols for the coordinate system. The general notation and formulas for the Christoffel symbols are: Γ Γ i i i = { i i i } = 1 h i ∂ ∂ h i ∂ ∂ q i ; Γ Γ i i j = { i i j } = 1 h i ∂ ∂ h i ∂ ∂ q j = { i j i } ; Γ Γ j i i = { j i i } = − − h i h j 2 ∂ ∂ h i ∂ ∂ q j , and the symbol is zero when all the indices are different. Despite appearances to the contrary, the Christoffel symbols do not form the components of a tensor. For example, they are zero in Cartesian coordinates, but not in polar coordinates.