Versor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Versor (from Latin versus = "turned" from pp. of vertere = "to turn") is a term introduced by William Rowan Hamilton to indicate the turning factor of a quaternion.

In geometry and physics, a versor is sometimes defined as a unit vector indicating the orientation of a directed axis or vector. For instance:

• The versors of a Cartesian coordinate system are the unit vectors codirectional with the axes of that system.

• The versor (or normalized vector) of a non-zero vector is the unit vector codirectional with , i.e.,

where is the norm (or length) of .

[edit] See also

• Quaternions and spatial rotation

[edit] External links

• http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/versor
• http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Versor