Question

What are the different methods of writing a vector's angle/direction (eg. navigator method, etc.)?

Answer 1

One is writing in forms of the vectors i and j
i=\[\left(\begin{matrix}1 \\ 0\end{matrix}\right)\]

Answer 2

j=\[\left(\begin{matrix}0 \\ 1\end{matrix}\right)\]

Answer 3

So a vector V=3i+8j is the same than
\[\left(\begin{matrix}3 \\ 8\end{matrix}\right)\]

Answer 4

And those are the two forms of writing that I know

Answer 5

You can write a vector like this, <a,b> which means a is the x-component and b is the y-component.

But if you want vectors with angles involved, then what you do is find out the length of the vector by looking at it as the hypotenuse of a right triangle.



So you can see that the vector's length is r=sqrt(x^2+y^2)

and then you can also see that the angle of the vector is \[\theta = \tan^{-1}(\frac{ y }{ x})\]

And don't forget x=r*cos(theta) and y=r*sin(theta) if you need to find one thing or another, they can be useful.

So now you should have everything you need to represent a vector in terms of its magnitude and direction (vector length and angle).