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A scalar is an element of a field which is used to define a vector space.In linear algebra, real numbers or generally elements of a field are called scalars and relate to vectors in an associated vector space through the operation of scalar multiplication (defined in the vector space), in which a vector can be multiplied by a scalar in the defined way to produce another vector.
A scalar in physics and other areas of science is also a scalar in mathematics, as an element of a mathematical field used to define a vector space.For example, the magnitude (or length) of an electric field vector is calculated as the square root of its absolute square (the inner product of the electric field with itself); so, the inner product's result is an element of the mathematical field ...
The simplest example of a vector space over a field F is the field F itself with its addition viewed as vector addition and its multiplication viewed as scalar multiplication. More generally, all n -tuples (sequences of length n ) ( a 1 , a 2 , … , a n ) {\displaystyle (a_{1},a_{2},\dots ,a_{n})} of elements a i of F form a vector space that ...
It is common to call these tuples vectors, even in contexts where vector-space operations do not apply. More generally, when some data can be represented naturally by vectors, they are often called vectors even when addition and scalar multiplication of vectors are not valid operations on these data. [disputed – discuss] Here are some examples.
The simplest example of a vector space is the trivial one: {0}, which contains only the zero vector (see the third axiom in the Vector space article). Both vector addition and scalar multiplication are trivial. A basis for this vector space is the empty set, so that {0} is the 0-dimensional vector space over F.
Scalar multiplication of a vector by a factor of 3 stretches the vector out. The scalar multiplications −a and 2a of a vector a. In mathematics, scalar multiplication is one of the basic operations defining a vector space in linear algebra [1] [2] [3] (or more generally, a module in abstract algebra [4] [5]).
Mathematically, a scalar field on a region U is a real or complex-valued function or distribution on U. [1] [2] The region U may be a set in some Euclidean space, Minkowski space, or more generally a subset of a manifold, and it is typical in mathematics to impose further conditions on the field, such that it be continuous or often continuously differentiable to some order.
The term vector was coined by W. R. Hamilton around 1843, as he revealed quaternions, a system which uses vectors and scalars to span a four-dimensional space. For a quaternion q = a + b i + c j + d k, Hamilton used two projections: S q = a , for the scalar part of q , and V q = b i + c j + d k, the vector part.