The funda of angular displacement
Classical Mechanics
Level
pending
Angular displacement can be seen everywhere in the universe (even in these beautiful sea waves!) Can somebody say what type of quantity angular displacement is (unless it is very small) ?
None
Scalar
Vector
Both
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1 solution
Well guys, though it may seem that angular displacement is a vector quantity, but it is not (unless it is very small). A quantity must follow some criteria in order to be a vector. First of all it must have a magnitude and a direction. Angular displacement satisfies both of these conditions. It obviously has a magnitude, and also a direction! (Either clockwise or counter-clockwise). However to be represented as a vector, a quantity must obey some laws of vector addition, one of which says that if we add two or more vectors the order in which the addition is done doesn't matter. Amazingly, angular displacements fail to obey this criterion. This makes them a scalar!