Mark H. answered • 05/17/19
Tutoring in Math and Science at all levels
First, always remember that a vector is about both magnitude and direction. There is a popular mantra: "Speed counts if you are going in the right direction"----this is often used to describe situations and actions not related to math.
My favorite method is use travel on a map. If someone walks 3 miles due North, and then 4 miles due East, we can plot this on a map and readily see that the effect was the same as if they had walked 5 miles approximately NorthEast. I used the values for a 3-4-5 right triangle so we could see the net distance without any math.
Plot this on graph paper as described above...then do another plot with both North and East vectors starting from the same point. You will see that, by drawing a parallelogram using the two vectors, that one diagonal of the parallelogram is the same length as you got from the first method.
