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When only the magnitude and direction of the vector matter, and the particular initial or terminal points are of no importance, the vector is called a free vector. The distinction between bound and free vectors is especially relevant in mechanics, where a force applied to a body has a point of contact (see resultant force and couple ).
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.
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.
The following are important identities in vector algebra.Identities that only involve the magnitude of a vector ‖ ‖ and the dot product (scalar product) of two vectors A·B, apply to vectors in any dimension, while identities that use the cross product (vector product) A×B only apply in three dimensions, since the cross product is only defined there.
A three-dimensional vector can be specified in the following form, using unit vector notation: = ^ + ȷ ^ + ^ where v x, v y, and v z are the scalar components of v. Scalar components may be positive or negative; the absolute value of a scalar component is its magnitude.
The vector projection (also known as the vector component or vector resolution) of a vector a on (or onto) a nonzero vector b is the orthogonal projection of a onto a straight line parallel to b. The projection of a onto b is often written as proj b a {\displaystyle \operatorname {proj} _{\mathbf {b} }\mathbf {a} } or a ∥ b .
so the curl of a 1-vector field (fiberwise 4-dimensional) is a 2-vector field, which at each point belongs to 6-dimensional vector space, and so one has = < =,,,,, which yields a sum of six independent terms, and cannot be identified with a 1-vector field. Nor can one meaningfully go from a 1-vector field to a 2-vector field to a 3-vector field ...
Given a subset S of R n, a vector field is represented by a vector-valued function V: S → R n in standard Cartesian coordinates (x 1, …, x n). If each component of V is continuous, then V is a continuous vector field. It is common to focus on smooth vector fields, meaning that each component is a smooth function (differentiable any number ...