Vectors and Three Dimensional Geometry
In the real world we meet many things which can be described in terms of magnitude, i.e. a non-negative multiple of some unit. Some familiar examples are mass (e.g. 6.4 kilograms) and distance (e.g. 100 metres). These are known as scalar quantities.
Other things, known as vector quantities, have a direction as well as a magnitude. For example, the acceleration due to gravity at the Earth’s surface has magnitude 9.81 metres per second per second and is directed towards the centre of the Earth. In this chapter, we introduce the mathematical objects which can be used to represent such quantities.
We define vectors in terms of directed line segments and give a geometrical definition of addition
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