Re: i,j,k things.

[Joel Rauber <Joel_Rauber@SDSTATE.EDU>]

Ludwik Kowalski wrote in part:

> Yes, components of a vector are vectors.
> And yes, as stated by Robert Carlson, a unit vector is
> created by dividing a vector by its magnitude.

I'm going to be pedantic here; I find it necessary to be very careful to
distinguish between the "components" of vectors and "component vectors" of
vectors. They aren't the same thing, and I wish we had a better vocabularly
for this.

when we Write:

(below the underscore represents a diacritical arrow over the letter
following it, e.g. '_A' = "the vector A". Whereas an underscore following a
letter means the next item is a subscript;  e.g. 'A_x' = "A sub x".  Oh how
I hate writing mathematics in ascii. (i,j,k have the meaning presented in
this thread, i.e. a caret diacritical is to be understood over the i,j and
k)

_A = A_x i  + A_y j

The x-component vector is 'A_x i',

the x-component is 'A_x'

The component is not a vector, in general it is a scalar function.

Joel Rauber