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The concept of force makes the everyday notion of pushing or pulling mathematically precise. Because the magnitude and direction of a force are both important, force is a vector quantity. The SI unit of force is the newton (N), and force is often represented by the symbol F. Force plays an important role in classical mechanics.
In the image, the vector F 1 is the force experienced by q 1, and the vector F 2 is the force experienced by q 2. When q 1 q 2 > 0 the forces are repulsive (as in the image) and when q 1 q 2 < 0 the forces are attractive (opposite to the image). The magnitude of the forces will always be equal.
If the force is perpendicular to the displacement vector r, the moment arm will be equal to the distance to the centre, and torque will be a maximum for the given force. The equation for the magnitude of a torque, arising from a perpendicular force: = ().
Newton's law of gravitation resembles Coulomb's law of electrical forces, which is used to calculate the magnitude of the electrical force arising between two charged bodies. Both are inverse-square laws, where force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the bodies. Coulomb's law has charge in place of mass and a ...
[19]: 14–15 The torque can vanish even when the force is non-zero, if the body is located at the reference point (=) or if the force and the displacement vector are directed along the same line. The angular momentum of a collection of point masses, and thus of an extended body, is found by adding the contributions from each of the points.
A vector is what is needed to "carry" the point A to the point B; the Latin word vector means "carrier". [4] It was first used by 18th century astronomers investigating planetary revolution around the Sun. [5] The magnitude of the vector is the distance between the two points, and the direction refers to the direction of displacement from A to B.
By definition, all Euclidean vectors have a magnitude (see above). However, a vector in an abstract vector space does not possess a magnitude. A vector space endowed with a norm, such as the Euclidean space, is called a normed vector space. [8] The norm of a vector v in a normed vector space can be considered to be the magnitude of v.
[1] [4] Bound vector quantities are formulated as a directed line segment, with a definite initial point besides the magnitude and direction of the main vector. [ 1 ] [ 3 ] For example, a force on the Euclidean plane has two Cartesian components in SI unit of newtons and an accompanying two-dimensional position vector in meters, for a total of ...