Concepts and Notation
Lets learn about some useful vector concepts:
· Position: This is the location of an object relative to a reference point. An example of using position would be saying “My cat is located 2m [east] of me”.
· Displacement: Closely tied to position. Displacement is the “space between positions”, if you are situated 7m [north] of your house ( position 1 ), you walked for a while and you stopped 17m [north] or your house (position 2) then your displacement is 10m [north]. Displacement is different from distance, this will be discussed later.
· Velocity: Simply displacement over time. How much has your position changed over time. Here are some velocities: 44km/h [south], 14m/s [southeast]. It differs from speed.
· Acceleration: velocity over time. What sets it apart from scalar acceleration is that acceleration will occur even when the magnitude of the velocity is identical – when the direction of the velocity changes.
Notation:
A vector variable will always have a line/little arrow on top of its variable: 
I use the above variable to represent velocity. The vector quantity itself will have its direction written in square brackets after the magnitude: 75m [east], 33km/h [west]. When the direction does not directly correspond to one of the four directions (NSEW) we can use angles to describe the direction. The notation that we use is:
[ direction1 angle from direction1 to direction2 ]
Lets analyze a vector quantity, 23m [S55°E]. 23m is the displacement, this is the scalar (directionless) portion of the vector quantity. [S55°E] is the direction portion, which turns this into a vector quantity. The “S” stands for south, 55 is the angle which the direction takes from south to “E”, east. The actual direction is 55 degrees east of the south direction. The above displacement can also be written as 23m [E35°S] ( we go from east 35 degrees to the south ).