Tag
Vectors
Entries tagged vectors.
4 entries
Cross product as oriented area and rotation
The cross product of two vectors is a third vector, perpendicular to both, whose length equals the area of the parallelogram they span and whose direction, fixed by a right hand convention, records the sense of rotation from the first vector to the second.
7 min
ConceptDot product as alignment
The dot product of two vectors is a single number, equal to the product of their lengths and the cosine of the angle between them, that measures how much one points along the other.
7 min
ConceptTwo-dimensional motion and projectiles
Motion in two dimensions, including a thrown or launched projectile's curved path, can be built exactly by treating the horizontal and vertical motions as two independent one-dimensional motions happening at the same time, sharing only the clock.
7 min
ConceptVectors as directed quantities
A vector is a quantity that has both a magnitude and a direction, and that combines with others by placing them tip to tail rather than by ordinary addition of numbers.
7 min