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A vector pointing from A to B. In mathematics, physics, and engineering, a Euclidean vector or simply a vector (sometimes called a geometric vector [1] or spatial vector [2]) is a geometric object that has magnitude (or length) and direction. Euclidean vectors can be added and scaled to form a vector space.
The operations of vector addition and scalar multiplication must satisfy certain requirements, called vector axioms. Real vector spaces and complex vector spaces are kinds of vector spaces based on different kinds of scalars: real numbers and complex numbers. Scalars can also be, more generally, elements of any field.
Using the algebraic properties of subtraction and division, along with scalar multiplication, it is also possible to “subtract” two vectors and “divide” a vector by a scalar. Vector subtraction is performed by adding the scalar multiple of −1 with the second vector operand to the first vector operand. This can be represented by the ...
Description: Diagram illustrating the subtraction a−b of vectors a and b.: Date: 2 June 2007: Source: Own work: Author: Benjamin D. Esham ()Permission (Reusing this file)As a courtesy (but not a requirement), please e-mail me or leave a note on my talk page if you use this image outside of Wikipedia.
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.
For Minkowski addition, the zero set, {}, containing only the zero vector, 0, is an identity element: for every subset S of a vector space, S + { 0 } = S . {\displaystyle S+\{0\}=S.} The empty set is important in Minkowski addition, because the empty set annihilates every other subset: for every subset S of a vector space, its sum with the ...
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 + 2 w . 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 ...
An example of an external operation is scalar multiplication, where a vector is multiplied by a scalar and result in a vector. An n -ary multifunction or multioperation ω is a mapping from a Cartesian power of a set into the set of subsets of that set, formally ω : X n → P ( X ) {\displaystyle \omega :X^{n}\rightarrow {\mathcal {P}}(X)} .