Study Section 13.3 Dot Product. Some things to
watch for that we didn't cover in class today:
Finding the projection of one vector onto another
Given two vectors u and v, how to
resolve the vector v into two component vectors, one
of which is parallel to u and the other of which is
perpendicular to u. I don't particularly like the
notation used for this in the text. Notice that the discussion, and
the boxed formula on p625, assume that u is a unit
vector (i.e. a vector of length one). Remember this when you do problem
25.
Example 2
The physical interpretation of dot product (of a force vector with
a displacement vector) as work
Other interpretations of dot product (in other contexts) show up in
the HWK problems
Note that it's often helpful to consciously bear in mind whether a
given expression denotes a scalar quantity or a vector quantity