CHAPTER 3. VECTOR ALGEBRA Part 1: Addition and Scalar
CHAPTER 3. VECTOR ALGEBRA Part 1: Addition and Scalar Multiplication for Vectors. §1. Basics. Geometric or physical quantities such as length, area, volume, tempera- ture, pressure, speed, energy, capacity etc. are given by specifying a single numbers. Such quantities are called scalars, because many of them can be measured by tools with scales. Simply put, a scalar is just a number. Quantities such as force, velocity, acceleration, momentum, angular velocity, electric or magnetic field at a point etc are vector quantities, which are represented by an arrow. If the ‘base’ and the ‘head’ of this arrow are B and H repectively, then we denote this vector by −−→BH: Figure 1. Often we use a single block letter in lower case, such as u, v, w, p, q, r etc. to denote a vector. Thus, if we also use v to denote the above vector −−→BH, then v = −−→BH.A vector v has two ingradients: magnitude and direction. The magnitude is the length of the arrow representing v, and is denoted by v . In case v = −−→BH, certainly we | | have v = −−→BH for the magnitude of v. The meaning of the direction of a vector is | | | | self–evident. Two vectors are considered to be equal if they have the same magnitude and direction. You recognize two equal vectors in drawing, if their representing arrows are parallel to each other, pointing in the same way, and have the same length 1 Figure 2. For example, if A, B, C, D are vertices of a parallelogram, followed in that order, then −→AB = −−→DC and −−→AD = −−→BC: Figure 3.
[Show full text]