Vectors
are lists of numbers or expressions contained in square brackets, like
[
1, 3, 5 ].
The calculator
treats a vector as a matrix with only one row.
The vector
above looks like
[ 1 3 5 ] (no commas) in the history area of the
HOME screen.
The vector
above looks like
[ [ 1, 3, 5 ] ] if you copy it from the history
area to the command line.
Vectors may
have any number of components, or entries; on the calculator you're
limited to 999.
You can display
vectors with two components in Polar coordinates
as well as Rectangular coordinates.
You can
display vectors with three components in Cylindrical
or Spherical coordinates as well as Rectangular coordinates.
The first
component of vector
v is v[ 1, 1 ]. (First row, first entry.)
The second
component of vector
v is v[ 1, 2 ]. (First row, second entry.)
So [
1, 3, 5 ][ 1, 3 ] is 5.
The standard
vector operations are in the Vector ops submenu of the Matrix
submenu of the
MATH menu (2nd 5).
You can
also find them in the CATALOG or type them in
by hand if you remember their official names.
-
unitV( applied
to a vector produces a unit vector (a vector of length 1) with the same
direction.
unitV([1,2,-2]) = [1/3,2/3,-2/3].
-
crossP(
applied to a pair of vectors each with three components gives the cross
product of those vectors. (The cross product of two vectors is a vector
with length equal to the product of the lengths multiplied by the sine
of the angle between them and direction perpendicular to both of them,
chosen so that v,
w, and v x w form a right-hand system.
See your calculus book for details.) crossP([1,3,5],[1,2,-2]) = [-16,7,-1].
-
dotP(
applied to a pair of vectors gives the dot product of those vectors. (The
dot product is a number which is the sum of the products of the corresponding
components of the two vectors. Geometrically, it's the product of the lengths
of the vectors multiplied by the cosine of the angle between them.) dotP([1,2,3,4],[1,3,5,7])
= 50.
-
The next four
command convert vectors with two components to Polar
format, vectors with two or three components to Rectangular format, and
vectors with three components to Cylindrical
or Spherical format.
-
The command
you don't see here is norm(, which computes the length of a vector.
It's on the Norms submenu of the Matrix submenu of the MATH
menu (2nd 5.) You can see in the screen above that the Norms
submenu is item H on the Matrix submenu. You can also find
it in the CATALOG or type it in by hand if you
remember it's called Norm and not Length. You can also compute the
square root of the dot product of the vector with itself.
Return
to top of page.
Go
to calculator index.