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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 ...
Vector addition and scalar multiplication: a vector v (blue) is added to another vector w (red, upper illustration). Below, w is stretched by a factor of 2, yielding the sum v + 2w . In mathematics and physics , a vector space (also called a linear space) is a set whose elements, often called vectors , can be added together and multiplied ...
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.
The final column lists some special properties that some of the quantities have, such as their scaling behavior (i.e. whether the quantity is intensive or extensive), their transformation properties (i.e. whether the quantity is a scalar, vector, matrix or tensor), and whether the quantity is conserved.
A free vector is a vector quantity having an undefined support or region of application; it can be freely translated with no consequences; a displacement vector is a prototypical example of free vector. Aside from the notion of units and support, physical vector quantities may also differ from Euclidean vectors in terms of metric.
From the definition, it is clear that a displacement vector is a polar vector. The velocity vector is a displacement vector (a polar vector) divided by time (a scalar), so is also a polar vector. Likewise, the momentum vector is the velocity vector (a polar vector) times mass (a scalar), so is a polar vector.
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.
When the scalar field is the real numbers, the vector space is called a real vector space, and when the scalar field is the complex numbers, the vector space is called a complex vector space. [4] These two cases are the most common ones, but vector spaces with scalars in an arbitrary field F are also commonly considered.