Lesson Plan: The Scalar Product of Two Vectors Physics • First Year of Secondary School
This lesson plan includes the objectives, prerequisites, and exclusions of the lesson teaching students how to calculate the scalar product of two vectors using both the components of the vectors and the magnitudes of the vectors and the angle between them.
Objectives
Students will be able to
- use to find the scalar product of two vectors that are given in component form,
- recognize that if two vectors are perpendicular to each other, their scalar product is zero,
- recognize that the scalar product of two vectors has a maximum positive value when the two vectors are parallel and a maximum negative value when the two vectors are antiparallel,
- use to find the scalar product of two vectors, where the length of each vector and the angle between the vectors are known.
Prerequisites
Students should already be familiar with
- what a vector is, that it represents a magnitude and a direction,
- representing a vector in component form using notation,
- representing a vector in magnitude and in argument form.
Exclusions
Students will not cover
- vectors in three dimensions,
- the vector product of two vectors,
- matrices and matrix algebra.
