Vectors

Heads up! This course may be archived and/or unavailable.

This course is a part of Precalculus, a 8-course Topic series from Khan Academy.

Learn what vectors are and how they can be used to model real-world situations. Perform various operations with vectors like adding, subtracting, scaling, conversion between rectangular to polar coordinates, etc.

This course contains 10 segments:

Vector basics

Learn the basics of vectors, like that a vector has both magnitude and direction.

Magnitude of vectors

Find the magnitude of a vector given in component form.

Scalar multiplication

Multiply a vector by a scalar to get a new vector.

Vector addition and subtraction

Combine two vectors by adding or subtracting them to get a new vector.

Combined vector operations

Use both scalar multiplication and vector addition or subtraction in the same problem!

Unit vectors

Learn about special vectors called unit vectors that have a magnitude of 1.

Magnitude and direction form of vectors

Think about how we can represent vectors using their magnitude and direction instead of their components.

Component form of vectors

Convert vectors from magnitude and direction form to component form.

Adding vectors in magnitude and direction form

Learn how to add two vectors together that are in magnitude and direction form. We can always use our old friend component form!

Applications of vectors

Apply what you've learned about vectors so far to solve some fun word problems.