Contact and Non-Contact Forces

Vectors and Scalars

• Force is a vector quantity- it has a magnitude and direction.
• Lots of physical quantities are vector quantities: force, velocity, displacement, acceleration, momentum, etc.
• Some physical quantities only have a magnitude, and no direction. They are scalar qualities, e.g: spped, distance, mass, temperature, time, etc.
• Vectors are usually represented by an arrow- the length of the arrow shows the magnitude, and the direction shows the direction of the quantity.
• Velocity is a vector, but speed is scalar becuase speed…