ABSTRACT
Vector methods are standard tools for physics. This chapter discusses the properties of vectors and vector fields that occur in classical physics. There are also physical quantities that require a magnitude and a direction for their complete specification. These are called vectors if their combination with each other is commutative. A vector quantity may be graphically represented by an arrow-tipped line segment. The algebraic notation of a vector can be generalised to spaces of dimension greater than three, where an ordered n-tuple of real numbers represents a vector. There are several ways of multiplying two vectors, each of which has a special meaning; two types are in particular important in such context: the ‘scalar product’ and the ‘vector product’.
