Celeb Glow
news | April 07, 2026

How to find bounds for $\phi$ in spherical coordinates with a cone

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I have a sphere and a cone making up a region.

Sphere $x^{2}+y^{2}+z^{2}= a^{2}$Cone $z=c \sqrt{x^{2}+y^{2}}$

Where $c$ and $a$ are positive constants.

I need to find the integral of $x^{2}+y^{2}+z^{2}$ over the region that is above the cone and below the sphere. Using spherical coordinates I have set up the following bounds:

$ 0 ≤ ρ ≤ a $

$ 0 ≤ θ ≤ 2\pi $

$0 ≤ φ ≤ ? $

I don't know how to find the bounds for phi. If there were no constants I would have plugged in

$x^{2}+y^{2}+{(c\sqrt{x^{2}+y^{2}})}^{2} = a^{2}$then

$ (c^{2} +1) (x^{2}+y^{2})= a^{2}$then $x^{2}+y^{2} = r^{2} $so $ (c^{2} +1) (r^2)= a^{2}$

$ r= \frac{a}{\sqrt{c^{2}+1}}$

we also know the relationship $ r= ρ\sin\phi$

So finally

$ \frac{1}{\sqrt{c^{2}+1}} =\sin\phi$Then I would take inverse sign which would give me the max angle for $φ$ and therefore would know the bound, in this case I don't know and I don't know how to find it, I was considering using cylindrical coordinates instead but it led to a tedious integral. Please your advice on how to solve this and the thought process behind. Thank you :)

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1 Answer

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Since you are given $$z=c\sqrt {x^2+y^2}= cr$$ and you know that $$\tan \phi = \frac {r}{z}$$

We get $$\tan \phi =1/c$$

Thus the limits for $\phi$ are $$0\le \phi \le \tan ^{-1} (1/c)$$

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