Vector

The word vector has many different definitions, depending on who is defining it and in what context. Physicists will often refer to a vector as "a quantity with a direction and magnitude." For Euclidean geometers, a vector is essentially a directed line segment. In many situations, a vector is best considered as an n-tuple of numbers (often real or complex). Most generally, but also most abstractly, a vector is any object which is an element of a given vector space.

A vector is usually graphically represented as an arrow. Vectors can be uniquely described in many ways. The two most common is (for 2-dimensional vectors) by describing it with its length (or magnitude) and the angle it makes with some fixed line (usually the x-axis) or by describing it as an arrow beginning at the origin and ending at the pint $(x,y)$ . An $n$ -dimensional vector can be described in this coordinate form as an ordered $n$ -tuple of numbers within angle brackets or parentheses, $(x\,\,y\,\,z\,\,...)$ . The set of vectors over a field is called a vector space.

Description

Every vector $\vec{PQ}$ has a starting point $P\langle x_1, y_1\rangle$ and an endpoint $Q\langle x_2, y_2\rangle$ . Since the only thing that distinguishes one vector from another is its magnitude,i.e. length, and direction, vectors can be freely translated about a plane without changing them. Hence, it is convenient to consider a vector as originating from the origin. This way, two vectors can be compared only by looking at their endpoints. This is why we only require $n$ values for an $n$ dimensional vector written in the form $(x\,\,y\,\,z\,\,...)$ . The magnitude of a vector, denoted $||\vec{v}||$ , is found simply by using the distance formula.

Addition of Vectors

For vectors $\vec{v}$ and $\vec{w}$ , with angle $\theta$ formed by them, $|(\vec{v}+\vec{w})|^2=|\vec{v}|^2+|\vec{w}|^2-2|\vec{v}||\vec{w}|\cos\theta$ .

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From this it is simple to derive that for a real number $c$ , $c\vec{v}$ is the vector $\vec{v}$ with magnitude multiplied by $c$ . Negative $c$ corresponds to opposite directions.

Properties of Vectors

Since a vector space is defined over a field $K$ , it is logically inherent that vectors have the same properties as those elements in a field.

For any vectors $\vec{x}$ , $\vec{y}$ , $\vec{z}$ , and real numbers $a,b$ ,

$\vec{x}+\vec{y}=\vec{y}+\vec{x}$ (Commutative in +)
$(\vec{x}+\vec{y})+\vec{z}=\vec{x}+(\vec{y}+\vec{z})$ (Associative in +)
There exists the zero vector $\vec{0}$ such that $\vec{x}+\vec{0}=\vec{x}$ (Additive identity)
For each $\vec{x}$ , there is a vector $\vec{y}$ such that $\vec{x}+\vec{y}=\vec{0}$ (Additive inverse)
$1\vec{x}=\vec{x}$ (Unit scalar identity)
$(ab)\vec{x}=a(b\vec{x})$ (Associative in scalar)
$a(\vec{x}+\vec{y})=a\vec{x}+a\vec{y}$ (Distributive on vectors)
$(a+b)\vec{x}=a\vec{x}+b\vec{x}$ (Distributive on scalars)

Vector Operations

Dot (Scalar) Product Consider two vectors $\bold{u}=\langle u_1,u_2,\ldots,u_n\rangle$ and $\bold{v}=\langle v_1, v_2,\ldots,v_n\rangle$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$ . The dot product is defined as $\bold{u}\cdot\bold{v}=u_1v_1+u_2v_2+\cdots+u_nv_n$ .

Cross (Vector) Product The cross product between two vectors $\bold{a}$ and $\bold{b}$ in $\mathbb{R}^3$ is defined as the vector whose length is equal to the area of the parallelogram spanned by $\bold{a}$ and $\bold{b}$ and whose direction is in accordance with the right-hand rule.

If $\vec{a}=\langle a_1,a_2,a_3\rangle$ and $\vec{b}=\langle b_1,b_2,b_3\rangle$ , then the cross product of $\vec{a}$ and $\vec{b}$ is given by

$\vec{a}\times\vec{b}=\begin{vmatrix} \hat{i} & \hat{j} & \hat{k} \\ a_1 & a_2 & a_3 \\ b_1 & b_2 & b_3\end{vmatrix}.$

where $\hat{i},\hat{j},\hat{k}$ are unit vectors along the co-ordinate axes.

Triple Scalar product The triple scalar product of three vectors $\bold{a,b,c}$ is defined as $(\bold{a}\times\bold{b})\cdot \bold{c}$ . Geometrically, the triple scalar product gives the signed area of the parallelpiped determined by $\bold{a,b}$ and $\bold{c}$ . It follows that