Ok! My question is, what is the physical meaning of the vector produced by a cross product?
For instance, in torque, what does the cross product’s resultant vector mean? What does it tell me about the previous two vectors? I know, also, that the vector produced is perpendicular to both the previous vectors, but what does that mean? Again, what does that tell me about my two previous vectors.
I looked up this question online and found one response on Quora:
“A dot product represents things like work, essentially giving a number value to how much two vectors are “cooperating” . . . A cross product is a vector, at right angles to both vectors forming it. It measures essentially how much two vectors are not cooperating, and is a maximum when the two vectors are right angles.”
That sounds in the ball park as to the definition I want, but I need further clarification as to the word “cooperating” (if that person’s explanation is remotely correct). I don’t want a simple definition - I want meaning.
Please help!! Thanks for reading and I hope to have an answer soon!
:-)
