Basic Objects
The basic objects in vector calculus are scalar fields (scalar-valued functions) and vector fields (vector-valued functions). These are then combined or transformed under various operations, and integrated. In more advanced treatments, one further distinguishes pseudovector fields and pseudoscalar fields, which are identical to vector fields and scalar fields except that they change sign under an orientation-reversing map: for example, the curl of a vector field is a pseudovector field, and if one reflects a vector field, the curl points in the opposite direction. This distinction is clarified and elaborated in geometric algebra, as described below.
Read more about this topic: Vector Calculus
Famous quotes containing the words basic and/or objects:
“For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)