BASIC PHYSICS PRINCIPLES AND CONCEPTS
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loginIn this chapter I will introduce a certain class of physical quantities that require magni-tudes as well asdirectionsfor their complete description. These can be represented interms of appropriatedirected line segments, and are termedvectors. To be precise, how-ever, just a directed line segment cannot represent a physicalquantity fully, becauseone needs to specify theunitof that physical quantity as well. Thus, one has to un-derstand from the context whether the term vector refers to just a mathematical entity,without any unit attached to it, or to a physical quantity with its appropriate unit. Inthe present chapter I shall use the term mostly in the first of these two senses, i.e., as amathematical entity that can be represented by a directed line segment.
