what am i exactly computing when i take a dot product?

LIFE HATER: what am i exactly computing when i take a dot product?
1. what am i exactly computing when i take a dot product between two vectors?
2. what am i exactly computing when i take the cross product of two vectors?

Please, these may sound like very retarded questions, but I’d appreciate any sort of help.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Merlyn
The dot product is call an inner product and is used for finding the angle between vectors and is a good way to determine if to vectors are perpendicular to each other (the dot product will equal zero if they are)

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/DotProduct.html

the cross product is used to find a vector that is perpendicular to the both the vectors in the cross product

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/CrossProduct.html

Answer by amar_chaba
1 Dot product of two vectors is the product of the magnitude of one of the vectors and the comonent along this vector of the other vector.
2.The cross product of two vectors is equal to twice the area of the trianglewhose two sides represent the two vectors. its magnitude is the product of the magnitudes of the two vectors and sine of the angle between them, its direction is perpendicular(normal) to the plane of the triangle

Answer by Small_Fish_in_Big_Pond
Not retarded at all. They were created to help simplify some geometric calculations involving vectors. The dot product of a vector with itself is the square of the length of the line segment between them. The dot product of two vectors x and y divided by the lengths of x and y is equal to the cosine of the angle between them…

The cross product is easier. Geometrically it produces the vector that is perpendicular to the plane of the two crossed vectors.

Hope this helps.