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p03 025

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fernandez poma limbert jhon
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15 views1 page

p03 025

Uploaded by

fernandez poma limbert jhon
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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25.

Without loss of generality, we assume a points along the +x axis, and that b is at θ measured counter-
clockwise from a. We wish to verify that

r2 = a2 + b2 + 2ab cos θ

where a = |a| = ax (we’ll call it a for simplicity) and b = |b| = b2x + b2y . Since r = a + b then

r = |r| = (a + bx )2 + b2y . Thus, the above expression becomes

 2  2
(a + bx )2 + b2y = a2 + b2x + b2y + 2ab cos θ
a2 + 2abx + b2x + b2y = a2 + b2x + b2y + 2ab cos θ

which makes a valid equality since (the last term) 2ab cos θ is indeed the same as 2abx (on the left-hand
side). In a later section, the scalar (dot) product of vectors is presented and this result can be revisited
with a somewhat different-looking derivation.

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