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The cross product with respect to a right-handed coordinate system. In mathematics, the cross product or vector product (occasionally directed area product, to emphasize its geometric significance) is a binary operation on two vectors in a three-dimensional oriented Euclidean vector space (named here ), and is denoted by the symbol .
There are two lists of mathematical identities related to vectors: Vector algebra relations — regarding operations on individual vectors such as dot product, cross product, etc. Vector calculus identities — regarding operations on vector fields such as divergence, gradient, curl, etc.
As the name implies, the divergence is a (local) measure of the degree to which vectors in the field diverge. The divergence of a tensor field T {\displaystyle \mathbf {T} } of non-zero order k is written as div ( T ) = ∇ ⋅ T {\displaystyle \operatorname {div} (\mathbf {T} )=\nabla \cdot \mathbf {T} } , a contraction of a tensor field ...
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.
The scalar triple product (also called the mixed product, box product, or triple scalar product) is defined as the dot product of one of the vectors with the cross product of the other two. Geometric interpretation
The exterior product of two vectors can be identified with the signed area enclosed by a parallelogram the sides of which are the vectors. The cross product of two vectors in dimensions with positive-definite quadratic form is closely related to their exterior product.
In three dimensions the cross product is invariant under the action of the rotation group, SO(3), so the cross product of x and y after they are rotated is the image of x × y under the rotation. But this invariance is not true in seven dimensions; that is, the cross product is not invariant under the group of rotations in seven dimensions, SO(7).
The vector cross product, used to define the axis–angle representation, does confer an orientation ("handedness") to space: in a three-dimensional vector space, the three vectors in the equation a × b = c will always form a right-handed set (or a left-handed set, depending on how the cross product is defined), thus fixing an orientation in ...