cdot

Cdot, also known as the dot product or scalar product, is a mathematical operation that takes two vectors and returns a scalar. It is denoted by the symbol "cdot" (·) or by placing a dot between the two vectors. The dot product of two vectors A and B is defined as the product of their magnitudes and the cosine of the angle between them. In coordinate form, for vectors A = (a1, a2, a3) and B = (b1, b2, b3), the dot product is calculated as:

A · B = a1*b1 + a2*b2 + a3*b3

The dot product has several important properties. It is commutative, meaning A · B = B · A, and distributive over vector addition, meaning A · (B + C) = A · B + A · C. The dot product of a vector with itself is equal to the square of its magnitude, A · A = |A|^2.

The dot product is widely used in various fields, including physics, engineering, and computer graphics. In physics, it is used to calculate work done by a force, and in computer graphics, it is used to determine the angle between two vectors or to project one vector onto another.