what is geometric significance of directional derivatives?

Question

anonymous · Answer

I know to find direct. deriv. it is gradiant dotted with unit vector, but what does that mean?

amistre64 · Answer

it can be regarded as the force and direction acting upon an object in any given moment of time

amistre64 · Answer

or at least the direction ....

amistre64 · Answer

the derivative of a vector defined function gives the tangent vector

the unit stuff would just provide a direction at least to me

anonymous · Answer

great!  thanks! :)

amistre64 · Answer

dot product is a scalar tho ... might just be a force

amistre64 · Answer

lol .... hope my random thoughts help ;)

anonymous · Answer

lol, it did

anonymous · Answer

the physical significance is just that it tells us about the rate of change of some quantity in a specific direction, say we have an electric field, then, there the concept could be used to calculate the change of potential in a direction other than that of the fields and so on