This series of lessons is designed to help you learn, or review, the fundamentals of physics. We now step away from hardcore physics to talk about working with vectors.
Vectors- magnitude and direction
Here's the example of a vector we saw before:
So, we can treat vectors like arrows. This is useful for adding them up.
Example:
Say I walked 40 km east then 30 km north. What's my final displacement?
So, this is easy. We first walk 40 km east:
Now, from the tip of the old arrow, we draw the 30 km north:
Finally, to find the final displacement, we draw an arrow from the end of the first to the tip of the last:
Using the Pythagorean Theorem, our total displacement is 50 km N53E.
Hey, what was that last part again?
This is the conventional way of representing direction. We start with N or S (north or south), and move x degrees towards E or W (east or west).
Other methods of naming directions include:
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Up or down
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Left or right
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N, S, E, W
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NE, NW, SW, SE (all with 45 degrees in between)
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etc.
Does this work with velocity too?
Yes, it does. All you have to do is add up the velocity vectors and use them in your final calculations. It's pretty simple.
You now know vector addition
This is an important step towards learning physics. Next time, we'll introduce acceleration, finally!
Thanks for reading this Welcome to Physics Lesson!
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