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Covariance And Contravariance Of Vectors
In physics, especially in multilinear algebra and tensor analysis, covariance and contravariance describe how the quantitative description of certain geometric or physical entities changes with a change of basis. Briefly, a contravariant vector is a list of numbers that transforms oppositely to a change of basis, and a covariant vector is a list of numbers that transforms in the same way. Contravariant vectors are often just called ''vectors'' and covariant vectors are called ''covectors'' or ''dual vectors''. The terms ''covariant'' and ''contravariant'' were introduced by James Joseph Sylvester in 1851. Curvilinear coordinate systems, such as cylindrical coordinates, cylindrical or spherical coordinates, are often used in physical and geometric problems. Associated with any coordinate system is a natural choice of coordinate basis for vectors based at each point of the space, and covariance and contravariance are particularly important for understanding how the coordinate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vector 1-form
Vector most often refers to: * Euclidean vector, a quantity with a magnitude and a direction * Disease vector, an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism Vector may also refer to: Mathematics and physics * Vector (mathematics and physics) ** Row and column vectors, single row or column matrices ** Vector quantity ** Vector space ** Vector field, a vector for each point Molecular biology * Vector (molecular biology), a DNA molecule used as a vehicle to artificially carry foreign genetic material into another cell ** Cloning vector, a small piece of DNA into which a foreign DNA fragment can be inserted for cloning purposes ** Shuttle vector, a plasmid constructed so that it can propagate in two different host species ** Viral vector, a tool commonly used by molecular biologists to deliver genetic materials into cells Computer science * Vector, a one-dimensional array data structure ** Distance-vector routing protocol, a c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dilation (metric Space)
In mathematics, a dilation is a function f from a metric space M into itself that satisfies the identity :d(f(x),f(y))=rd(x,y) for all points x, y \in M, where d(x, y) is the distance from x to y and r is some positive real number. In Euclidean space Euclidean space is the fundamental space of geometry, intended to represent physical space. Originally, in Euclid's ''Elements'', it was the three-dimensional space of Euclidean geometry, but in modern mathematics there are ''Euclidean spaces ..., such a dilation is a similarity of the space. Dilations change the size but not the shape of an object or figure. Every dilation of a Euclidean space that is not a congruence has a unique fixed point that is called the ''center of dilation''. Some congruences have fixed points and others do not.. See also * Homothety * Dilation (operator theory) References {{DEFAULTSORT:Dilation (Metric Space) Metric geometry ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Field (mathematics)
In mathematics, a field is a set (mathematics), set on which addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division (mathematics), division are defined and behave as the corresponding operations on rational number, rational and real numbers. A field is thus a fundamental algebraic structure which is widely used in algebra, number theory, and many other areas of mathematics. The best known fields are the field of rational numbers, the field of real numbers and the field of complex numbers. Many other fields, such as field of rational functions, fields of rational functions, algebraic function fields, algebraic number fields, and p-adic number, ''p''-adic fields are commonly used and studied in mathematics, particularly in number theory and algebraic geometry. Most cryptographic protocols rely on finite fields, i.e., fields with finitely many element (set), elements. The theory of fields proves that angle trisection and squaring the circle cannot be done with a compass and straighte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vector Space
In mathematics and physics, a vector space (also called a linear space) is a set (mathematics), set whose elements, often called vector (mathematics and physics), ''vectors'', can be added together and multiplied ("scaled") by numbers called scalar (mathematics), ''scalars''. The operations of vector addition and scalar multiplication must satisfy certain requirements, called ''vector axioms''. Real vector spaces and complex vector spaces are kinds of vector spaces based on different kinds of scalars: real numbers and complex numbers. Scalars can also be, more generally, elements of any field (mathematics), field. Vector spaces generalize Euclidean vectors, which allow modeling of Physical quantity, physical quantities (such as forces and velocity) that have not only a Magnitude (mathematics), magnitude, but also a Orientation (geometry), direction. The concept of vector spaces is fundamental for linear algebra, together with the concept of matrix (mathematics), matrices, which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cotangent Vector
In differential geometry, the cotangent space is a vector space associated with a point x on a smooth (or differentiable) manifold \mathcal M; one can define a cotangent space for every point on a smooth manifold. Typically, the cotangent space, T^*_x\!\mathcal M is defined as the dual space of the tangent space at ''x'', T_x\mathcal M, although there are more direct definitions (see below). The elements of the cotangent space are called cotangent vectors or tangent covectors. Properties All cotangent spaces at points on a connected manifold have the same dimension, equal to the dimension of the manifold. All the cotangent spaces of a manifold can be "glued together" (i.e. unioned and endowed with a topology) to form a new differentiable manifold of twice the dimension, the cotangent bundle of the manifold. The tangent space and the cotangent space at a point are both real vector spaces of the same dimension and therefore isomorphic to each other via many possible isomorphisms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Einstein Notation
In mathematics, especially the usage of linear algebra in mathematical physics and differential geometry, Einstein notation (also known as the Einstein summation convention or Einstein summation notation) is a notational convention that implies summation over a set of indexed terms in a formula, thus achieving brevity. As part of mathematics it is a notational subset of Ricci calculus; however, it is often used in physics applications that do not distinguish between tangent and cotangent spaces. It was introduced to physics by Albert Einstein in 1916. Introduction Statement of convention According to this convention, when an index variable appears twice in a single term and is not otherwise defined (see Free and bound variables), it implies summation of that term over all the values of the index. So where the indices can range over the set , y = \sum_^3 x^i e_i = x^1 e_1 + x^2 e_2 + x^3 e_3 is simplified by the convention to: y = x^i e_i The upper indices are not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tangent Vector
In mathematics, a tangent vector is a vector that is tangent to a curve or surface at a given point. Tangent vectors are described in the differential geometry of curves in the context of curves in R''n''. More generally, tangent vectors are elements of a '' tangent space'' of a differentiable manifold. Tangent vectors can also be described in terms of germs. Formally, a tangent vector at the point x is a linear derivation of the algebra defined by the set of germs at x. Motivation Before proceeding to a general definition of the tangent vector, we discuss its use in calculus and its tensor In mathematics, a tensor is an algebraic object that describes a multilinear relationship between sets of algebraic objects associated with a vector space. Tensors may map between different objects such as vectors, scalars, and even other ... properties. Calculus Let \mathbf(t) be a parametric smooth curve. The tangent vector is given by \mathbf'(t) provided it exists and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cartesian Coordinate System
In geometry, a Cartesian coordinate system (, ) in a plane (geometry), plane is a coordinate system that specifies each point (geometry), point uniquely by a pair of real numbers called ''coordinates'', which are the positive and negative numbers, signed distances to the point from two fixed perpendicular oriented lines, called ''coordinate lines'', ''coordinate axes'' or just ''axes'' (plural of ''axis'') of the system. The point where the axes meet is called the ''Origin (mathematics), origin'' and has as coordinates. The axes direction (geometry), directions represent an orthogonal basis. The combination of origin and basis forms a coordinate frame called the Cartesian frame. Similarly, the position of any point in three-dimensional space can be specified by three ''Cartesian coordinates'', which are the signed distances from the point to three mutually perpendicular planes. More generally, Cartesian coordinates specify the point in an -dimensional Euclidean space for any di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Euclidean Distance
In mathematics, the Euclidean distance between two points in Euclidean space is the length of the line segment between them. It can be calculated from the Cartesian coordinates of the points using the Pythagorean theorem, and therefore is occasionally called the Pythagorean distance. These names come from the ancient Greek mathematicians Euclid and Pythagoras. In the Greek deductive geometry exemplified by Euclid's ''Elements'', distances were not represented as numbers but line segments of the same length, which were considered "equal". The notion of distance is inherent in the compass tool used to draw a circle, whose points all have the same distance from a common center point. The connection from the Pythagorean theorem to distance calculation was not made until the 18th century. The distance between two objects that are not points is usually defined to be the smallest distance among pairs of points from the two objects. Formulas are known for computing distances b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mass
Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementary particle, elementary particles, theoretically with the same amount of matter, have nonetheless different masses. Mass in modern physics has multiple Mass in special relativity, definitions which are conceptually distinct, but physically equivalent. Mass can be experimentally defined as a measure (mathematics), measure of the body's inertia, meaning the resistance to acceleration (change of velocity) when a net force is applied. The object's mass also determines the Force, strength of its gravitational attraction to other bodies. The SI base unit of mass is the kilogram (kg). In physics, mass is Mass versus weight, not the same as weight, even though mass is often determined by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Observable
In physics, an observable is a physical property or physical quantity that can be measured. In classical mechanics, an observable is a real-valued "function" on the set of all possible system states, e.g., position and momentum. In quantum mechanics, an observable is an operator, or gauge, where the property of the quantum state can be determined by some sequence of operations. For example, these operations might involve submitting the system to various electromagnetic fields and eventually reading a value. Physically meaningful observables must also satisfy transformation laws that relate observations performed by different observers in different frames of reference. These transformation laws are automorphisms of the state space, that is bijective transformations that preserve certain mathematical properties of the space in question. Quantum mechanics In quantum mechanics, observables manifest as self-adjoint operators on a separable complex Hilbert space ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scalar (physics)
Scalar quantities or simply scalars are physical quantities that can be described by a single pure number (a ''scalar'', typically a real number), accompanied by a unit of measurement, as in "10cm" (ten centimeters). Examples of scalar are length, mass, charge, volume, and time. Scalars may represent the magnitude of physical quantities, such as speed is to velocity. Scalars do not represent a direction. Scalars are unaffected by changes to a vector space basis (i.e., a coordinate rotation) but may be affected by translations (as in relative speed). A change of a vector space basis changes the description of a vector in terms of the basis used but does not change the vector itself, while a scalar has nothing to do with this change. In classical physics, like Newtonian mechanics, rotations and reflections preserve scalars, while in relativity, Lorentz transformations or space-time translations preserve scalars. The term "scalar" has origin in the multiplication o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
