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In the natural sciences, a vector quantity (also known as a vector physical quantity, physical vector, or simply vector) is a vector-valued physical quantity. [9] [10] It is typically formulated as the product of a unit of measurement and a vector numerical value (), often a Euclidean vector with magnitude and direction.
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.
It is formally defined as a directed line segment, or arrow, in a Euclidean space. [11] In pure mathematics, a vector is defined more generally as any element of a vector space. In this context, vectors are abstract entities which may or may not be characterized by a magnitude and a direction.
A set of vectors is linearly independent if none is in the span of the others. Equivalently, a set S of vectors is linearly independent if the only way to express the zero vector as a linear combination of elements of S is to take zero for every coefficient a i. A set of vectors that spans a vector space is called a spanning set or generating set.
In 1835 Giusto Bellavitis introduced the idea of equipollent directed line segments which resulted in the concept of a vector as an equivalence class of such segments.. 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.
Since orthogonal transformations are actually rotations and reflections, the invariance conditions mean that vectors of a central field are always directed towards, or away from, 0; this is an alternate (and simpler) definition. A central field is always a gradient field, since defining it on one semiaxis and integrating gives an antigradient.
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Vector calculus or vector analysis is a branch of mathematics concerned with the differentiation and integration of vector fields, primarily in three-dimensional Euclidean space, . [1] The term vector calculus is sometimes used as a synonym for the broader subject of multivariable calculus, which spans vector calculus as well as partial differentiation and multiple integration.