How position is a vector quantity?

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In a coordinate system position is just a label for the points, so we can distinguish between different points. Then why we use a position vector to specify the position as it is just a label and nothing else. We can use colours if we want to label the points and it would be fine. For example, Paris is a label for a specific location on earth and it does not have magnitude or direction. Please explain it in as simple terms as you can do not use jargon.

In: Physics

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Position isn’t just arbitrary labels. It needs to contain the information of *where a point is*. And that’s done most conveniently by specifying an origin point (the 0 point of the coordinate system) and then telling how far along each axis one needs to go.

Think of it like an address: you can ofc say that you live in “the green house” and you’d be fine if a) there aren’t a lot of houses b) the houses have already been painted. But otherwise it makes much more sense that you say you live in <city> <street name> <number>.

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