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| Cross Product or Vector Product of Two Vectors |
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The vector product of two vectors
is written as and is another vector where
The magnitude of
is defined by
= c = ab sin f ...... (i) |
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Where, f is
the angle between a and b, the direction of
,
the vector product of
is defined to be perpendicular to the plane containing
.
To understand the direction of the vector
,
let us refer to the figure. Imagine rotating a right handed screw whose axis is perpendicular to the plane formed by a and b so as to twist it from a to b through the angle p between them. Then the direction of advance of the screw gives the direction of the vector product
.
Another way of determining the direction of the vector product is the right
hand rule. If the right hand is held so that the curled fingers follow the
rotation of , the extended right thumb will point in
the direction of
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orders of factors in a vector product is important. This is not true for scalars because, the order of factors in algebra or arithmetic does not  |
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| Extending this to unit vectors, |
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