Question

describe what is meant is by scalar and vector quantities?

Answer 1

I am sure you have heard of the word scale before, to scale something up and down.

Answer 2

yup

Answer 3

and you know the definition of a vector? It has two characteristic identities.

Answer 4

Scalars are quantities that are fully described by a magnitude (or numerical value) alone.
Vectors are quantities that are fully described by both a magnitude and a direction.


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Answer 5

You can easily derive that yourself by thinking about it like this, velocity is a vector, or acceleration is a vector, because we all don't only care about the number of it (high or low) but also about the direction.

Imagine if I were telling you that I was running with 8 m/s (meters per second) you might consider that as impressive (Usain Bolt is a bit over 10 m/s), but if you ask for additional information and I would add that I was running that fast a steep down hill, it would be much less impressive.

So in fact you care about both, direction and magnitude.

Answer 6

Now a scalar quantity is just a number, or as they say, described by magnitude. Mass is a good example for this, because if I tell you that I am weight this much, you don't care about a direction.

Like my mass downwards on a stool and so on. (Neglecting special and general relativity here)