Did you know that Vectors are all around us!
Additionally, it’s because of vectors that we can even begin to understand such things as:
- Navigation
- Force
- Motion
It’s how meteorologist can understand the weather, or how air traffic controllers can keep track of airplane arrivals and departures, or how scientists can locate planets and stars in space.
In fact, without vectors, we wouldn’t have cool graphics for movies or video games!
So, what is a vector?
Well, as Math is Fun states, a vector is a directed line segment with direction and magnitude. In other words, it’s a ray that has a specific direction and length.
An Example of a Vector
But the power of vectors is really found in the sense that it can be used with Triangles and Trigonometry!
In this lesson we are going to investigate how to sketch, find and represent all types of vectors, and see how they relate to our understanding of Reference Triangle and Reference Angles.
It’s important to note that there are two classic ways of representing a vector.
And we will use these notations equally as we focus on how to perform operations such as adding and subtracting vectors, multiplying by scalars, finding horizontal and vertical components, as well as the Dot Product and even a Unit Vector.
Vector Notation
Did you know that Resultant Vector is nothing more than adding two vectors together?
Cool!
…and the Dot Product is what we say when we want to multiply two vectors together, and that it enables us to find the angle in-between two vectors in space!
Vectors are so useful that by accurately representing, sketching, and breaking down a vector into components by first drawing a Reference Triangle, as an online resource suggests, we will be able to handle any real world applications.
Don’t worry, while there are definitely some new terms and vocabulary going to be used throughout this lesson, I promise you that it will be fun and simple, and provide you with a firm foundation.
Understanding Vectors – Video
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