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In mathematics, the dot product or scalar product [note 1] is an algebraic operation that takes two equal-length sequences of numbers (usually coordinate vectors), and returns a single number. In Euclidean geometry , the dot product of the Cartesian coordinates of two vectors is widely used.
In Cartesian coordinates, the divergence of a continuously differentiable vector field = + + is the scalar-valued function: = = (, , ) (, , ) = + +. As the name implies, the divergence is a (local) measure of the degree to which vectors in the field diverge.
Vectors are defined in cylindrical coordinates by (ρ, φ, z), where ρ is the length of the vector projected onto the xy-plane, φ is the angle between the projection of the vector onto the xy-plane (i.e. ρ) and the positive x-axis (0 ≤ φ < 2π), z is the regular z-coordinate. (ρ, φ, z) is given in Cartesian coordinates by:
The dot product in Cartesian coordinates (Euclidean space with an orthonormal basis set) is simply the sum of the products of components. In orthogonal coordinates, the dot product of two vectors x and y takes this familiar form when the components of the vectors are calculated in the normalized basis:
In either the coordinate or vector formulations, one may verify that the given point lies on the given plane by plugging the point into the equation of the plane. To see that it is the closest point to the origin on the plane, observe that p {\displaystyle \mathbf {p} } is a scalar multiple of the vector v {\displaystyle \mathbf {v} } defining ...
To perform operations with a vector, we must have a straightforward method of calculating its components. In a Cartesian frame the necessary operation is the dot product of the vector and the base vector. [1]
To illustrate the equivalent usage, consider three-dimensional Euclidean space, letting: = + + = + + be two vectors where i, j, k (also denoted e 1, e 2, e 3) are the standard basis vectors in this vector space (see also Cartesian coordinates).
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 .