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Why the work is scalar quantity?

Updated: 2/3/2022
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Wiki User

7y ago

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Work is the product of a force and a displacement. Both of those are vectors.

There are two ways to multiply vectors. One of them produces another vector,

the other produces a scalar. The calculation for 'work' uses the scalar product.

The procedure is:

(magnitude of one vector) times (magnitude of the other vector) times (cosine of the angle between them).

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Kyla Klocko

Lvl 13
2y ago
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15y ago

Work is a scalar because it is "defined" to be the "scalar product" of force and displacement, w=f.d= -fd cos(a). The product of force and displacement vectors has two products, w = f.d + fxd = -fdcos(a) + fdsin(a) . The vector product is called torque and the scalar product is called work.

Physics needs to recognize that the quaternions are the numbers of the Universe. That is the Universe is composed of real and vector numbers i.e. quaternions.

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