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Also called the dot product, the scalar product is a special method of multiplying two vectors that gives as a result a scalar (that is, a quantity with magnitude but no direction). The scalar product has special significance in many physical situations.

The scalar product of two vectors A and B is represented by

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\begin

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[ \vec

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* \vec

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]\end


and is defined as c, where

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\begin

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[ c = \vec

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\dot \vec

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= |A| |B| sin(\theta) ]\end


Here θ is the angle between the two vectors A and B . The Scalar Product c is thus equal to the area of the parallelogram having as two of its sides the vectors A and B.

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