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These operations and associated laws qualify Euclidean vectors as an example of the more generalized concept of vectors defined simply as elements of a vector space. Vectors play an important role in physics: the velocity and acceleration of a moving object and the forces acting on it can all be described with vectors. [7]
A similar transformation law characterizes vector fields in physics: specifically, a vector field is a specification of n functions in each coordinate system subject to the transformation law relating the different coordinate systems.
Note: This page uses common physics notation for spherical coordinates, in which is the angle between the z axis and the radius vector connecting the origin to the point in question, while is the angle between the projection of the radius vector onto the x-y plane and the x axis. Several other definitions are in use, and so care must be taken ...
In physics, Euclidean vectors are used to represent physical quantities that have both magnitude and direction, but are not located at a specific place, in contrast to scalars, which have no direction. [7] For example, velocity, forces and acceleration are represented by vectors.
Vectors also describe many other physical quantities, such as displacement, acceleration, momentum, and angular momentum. Other physical vectors, such as the electric and magnetic field, are represented as a system of vectors at each point of a physical space; that is, a vector field. Tensors also have extensive applications in physics:
In physics and geometry, there are two closely related vector spaces, usually three-dimensional but in general of any finite dimension. Position space (also real space or coordinate space) is the set of all position vectors r in Euclidean space, and has dimensions of length; a position vector defines a point in space.
Analytic geometry is used in physics and engineering, and also in aviation, rocketry, space science, and spaceflight. It is the foundation of most modern fields of geometry, including algebraic , differential , discrete and computational geometry .
In physics, a force field is a vector field corresponding with a non-contact force acting on a particle at various positions in space. Specifically, a force field is a vector field F {\displaystyle \mathbf {F} } , where F ( r ) {\displaystyle \mathbf {F} (\mathbf {r} )} is the force that a particle would feel if it were at the position r ...