ECOR 1101 Mechanics I

Sections D and E

Jack van den Berg

Lecture 04 – Vector Dot Product + Review of Chapter 2

(Chapter 2: Section 2.9)

January 15, 2015

 Dot Product (Scalar Product)

 In statics it is often important to find:

 the angle between two forces;
 the perpendicular and parallel components of a force to a line.
 In 3-D space, the dot product is required to solve these problems
 The dot product of 2 vectors is the product of the magnitudes of
the vectors and the cosine of the angle between the vectors

A

B
Acos

AB = AB cos

ECOR1101 – Mechanics I 2
Dot Product
 Laws of Operation
 Commutative law
AB = BA (ABcos =BAcos)
 Multiplication by scalar
a(AB) =(aA)B = A(aB)
 Distributive law
A(B+C) = (A B)+(A C)

ECOR1101 – Mechanics I 3
Dot Product

Cartesian vector formulation

Dot product of any two collinear unit vectors is 1
ii = (1)(1)cos(0) = 1
Dot product of any two perpendicular vectors is 0
ij = (1)(1)cos(90) = 0

AB = (Axi + Ayj +Azk)  (Bxi + Byj + Bzk)

= AxBx(ii ) + AxBy(ij) + AxBz(ik)

+ AyBx(ji ) + AyBy(jj) + AyBz(jk)
+ AzBx(ki ) + AzBy(kj) + AzBz(kk)

A B = AxBx + AyBy + AzBz

ECOR1101 – Mechanics I 4
Dot Product
 The angle formed by two intersecting vectors can be
determined by dot product as:
 The dot product can be found from:

AB = AxBx + AyBy + AzBz

 A B  A
1
  cos  
 AB  
B
0    180

ECOR1101 – Mechanics I 5
 Dot Product

 The components of a force

parallel and perpendicular to a A
A
given line can be determined
with the dot product.
 The magnitude of the
component of A parallel to x- 
axis is given by the dot product
Ax =Acosux
of A and ux (unit vector along
x-axis) The component of the force A
Ax = Acos =Aux perpendicular to the x-axis can be
written as:
Ax =Axux A = Ax + A 
A = A – A x
A = Asinor
A  A2  Ax2

ECOR1101 – Mechanics I 6
Sample Problem

Find the direction cosines between the force F = (4i + 6j + 7k) N

and each of the three axes, x, y, z.

F  Fu F
z
F 4i  6 j  7k
uF   
F 42  62  7 2 F
u F  0.398i  0.597 j  0.6965k 
x 
uF  i
cos    0.398    66.5o
1 1 y
uF  j
cos    0.597    53.3o
1 1
u k
cos   F  0.6965    45.9 o
1 1

ECOR1101 – Mechanics I 7
Problem F2-25
Determine the angle Theta between the force and the line AO.

8
Problem F2-29
Find the magnitude of the projected component of the force along
the pipe AO.

9
Sample Problem
Determine the magnitude of
the force F so that the
resultant force of the three
forces is as small as
possible. What is the
magnitude of this smallest
resultant force?

ECOR1101 – Mechanics I 10