Hello all

I have two vectors with scalar and direction that I want to add and get a resulting vector that has scalar and direction. I can't seem to figure this out? Basically I have a force problem that I am solving for and I figured this would be best done by adding the vectors to get the resulting force however I can't seem to figure this out on SMath.

Thank-you to all who answer.

Can you post an example (from literature or made by you)?

oops I never tried this, I think he means this
http://www.1728.org/vectors.htm
I might be wrong but SMath does not calculate sum of vectors given in polar coordinates correctly

Actually, there are several ways to calculate vector sums. In 2D the most natural way for vectors given in polar form is using complex numbers. In mechanics, we usually transform to cartesian components, as this can be generalized to 3D.

Unfortunately, this example reveals that the handling of sums in Maxima plugin is very weak at the moment. Therefore, we have to "surrender" for the moment.

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Example adding 2D vectors.sm (14 KiB) downloaded 46 time(s).

Wrote

oops I never tried this, I think he means this
http://www.1728.org/vectors.htm
I might be wrong but SMath does not calculate sum of vectors given in polar coordinates correctly

I think you are right; BTW is a quite simple problem, so one can build his own function, with the most appropriate input standard that he think better and, like has Martin said, there are several ways to process the problem

I think the question is about adding vectors entered in polar form as in the first expression. Note that SMath does not return the correct result.

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Wrote

Note that SMath does not return the correct result.

Lists and list operations are not a good representation for vectors and vector operations. If lists obtained by pol2xy are to be added, they must be converted to vectors using sys2mat().

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@ioan92
Nice explanation on how to get a result. The point of the original question, I think, was a direct way using only polar notation provided by SMath
@mkraska
I forgot to apply sys2mat to an expression involving more than one system, anyway the result of that sum is incorrect.