Physics

force, velocity, acceleration

Force, velocity, acceleration, momentum, electric field — every quantity with magnitude AND direction is a vector. Newton's laws are vector equations.

Navigation

heading and speed

Wind 30 km/h from north + plane 200 km/h heading east = ground vector ≈ 202 km/h south-east-ish. Pilots add vectors before every flight.

Computer graphics

3D positions and orientations

Every 3D point on screen is a vector; every rotation, scale and translation is a matrix–vector multiplication. Games are vector maths at 60 fps.

Machine learning

data points are vectors

Each user, document or image becomes a vector in high-dimensional space. Recommendations work by finding nearest-neighbour vectors.

Game development

character movement

Player movement, projectile paths, collision normals, lighting directions — Unity and Unreal expose vector operations as their core API.

Robotics

arm position and direction

A robot arm computes the vector from gripper to target, then breaks it into joint rotations using inverse kinematics.