Unit Vector

A unit vector is a vector of length 1, sometimes also called a direction vector (Jeffreys and Jeffreys 1988). The unit vector v^^ having the same direction as a given (nonzero) vector v is defined by

 v^^=(v)/(|v|),

where |v| denotes the norm of v, is the unit vector in the same direction as the (finite) vector v. A unit vector in the x_n direction is given by

 x_n^^=((partialr)/(partialx_n))/(|(partialr)/(partialx_n)|),

where r is the radius vector.

When considered as the ith basis vector of a vector space, a unit vector may be written e_i (or e^->_i).

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