In Physics and Mathematics what name is given to a quantity that has magnitude but no direction?
Scalar (physics) Scalar (physics) A scalar or scalar quantity in physics is a physical quantity that can be described by a single element of a number field such as a real number, often accompanied by units of measurement. A scalar is usually said to be a physical quantity that only has magnitude and no other characteristics. This is in contrast to vectors, tensors, etc. which are described by several numbers that characterize their magnitude, direction, and so on. The concept of a scalar in physics is essentially the same as in mathematics. Formally, a scalar is unchanged by coordinate system transformations. In
Vector (mathematics and physics) which may make the terminology confusing. Similarly, some physical phenomena involve a direction and a magnitude. They are often represented by vectors, even if operations of vector spaces do not apply to them. Every algebra over a field is a vector space, but elements an algebra are generally not called vectors. However, in some cases, they are called "vectors", mainly for historical reasons. A vector field is a vector-valued function that, generally, has a domain of the same dimension (as a manifold) as its codomain, Vector (mathematics and physics) In mathematics and physics, a vector is an element of a