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What do gradient, curl, and div input and output? (e.g. vector field or scalar function of several variables)

Jon
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2 Answers2

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I'll borrow from JohnD's answer since only a part is relevant here

\begin{align} f\longrightarrow &\ \color{blue}{{\LARGE\boxed{\text{grad}}}} \longrightarrow \text{vector}\\ \text{vector}\longrightarrow &\ \color{blue}{{\LARGE\boxed{\text{div}}}} \longrightarrow \text{scalar}\\ \text{vector}\longrightarrow &\ \color{blue}{{\LARGE\boxed{\text{curl}}}} \longrightarrow \text{vector} \end{align}

Community
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Think about those operators as defined with the del ($\nabla$) operator: If $\nabla$ is a vector, $f$ is a scalar function of several variables and $g$ is a vector field, then $\text{grad} f = \nabla f$ is a scalar product of the scalar $f$ with the vector $\nabla$, $\text{div} g = \nabla \cdot g$ is the dot product of the vectors $\nabla$ and $g$, yielding a scalar, and $\text{curl} g = \nabla \times g$ is the cross product of the vectors $\nabla$ and $g$ resulting in a vector. So grad turns a scalar field into a vector field, div turns a vector field into a scalar field, and curl turns a vector field into another vector field.

andrepd
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