Vectors

Here is a link to the powerpoint presentation from this session.


Some content from Dra. Manogue's main talk on Monday which is relevant to today's topic.

First, a section on Curvilinear Coordinates from our online textbook. In class, you might want to show the figures from this textbook when you introduce this topic.

The following article discusses different conventions for spherical coordinates:

  • Tevian Dray and Corinne A. Manogue, Spherical Coordinates, College Mathematics Journal 34, 168-169 (2003).

A kinesthetic activity on curvilinear basis vectors will confirm your students' understanding.


The content from the workshop on 5 October 2010:

We started with a small white board question on representations of vectors:

  • Representations of Vectors
    • A useful reference may be the section onVectors from our online text on the Geometry of Vector Calculus.

Then a small whiteboard question on the dot product:

  • Dot Product
    • A useful reference may be the section on The Dot Product from our online text on the Geometry of Vector Calculus.

The following paper may be a helpful resource about the dot product:

The we ended with a Compare and Contrast Activity about plane waves:


You might want to follow up with some Visualization activities in Maple:

You might also want to follow up with this Compare and Contrast activity, either in class, or for homework:


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