Question

What is the difference between a dot product and a cross product and in what way are they different particularly when applied to vectors?

Answer 1

dot product is just the product of the magnitudes of the cectors... its a scalar quantity

Answer 2

cross product is a vector perpendicular to the original 2 vectors

Answer 3

how does the product of two vectors produce a scalar? also, my professor mentioned something about a dot product being just a product while a cross product required a matrix.

since it's a physics class and we're only concerned with Work right now, the cross product isn't as important but I wanted to know the difference/significance, however you want to phrase it.

Answer 4

vector has magnitude and direction ... when doing dot product the direction is ignored or irrelevant

Answer 5

for work done or energy required:
Suppose you hit a pool ball with force F .... it rolls in the same direction of the the force and the stops

the work done here (or the energy used) does not have any direction...
so you use the dot product of Force & displacement (s) in direction of the force ... 2 vectors

Answer 6

** then stops

Answer 7

yeah, good stopping point lol. after all, cross product would probably just confuse me.