Why do we call them 'scalars'?

A link to the full video is at the bottom of the screen.

Editing from long-form to short by Dawid Kołodziej

[RajivKC]

The more I watch your videos, the more math makes sense.

[himnishbhakt]

Mathematician1: Hey this number scales vectors. What should we call it?
Mathematician 2-uhhmmmm....
Mathematician1- Scalar *Brilliant*

[Pants]

you have taught me more clearly in this short than all of my highschool math teachers combined

[carlosmafia]

People often ask me "why is two negatives multiplied a positive, but two positives multiplied isn't a negative?"

It's simple. Negative, I turn around. Multiply by a negative, I turn around again. I'm facing the same way.

A positive, I don't turn around. Multiply by a positive, I don't turn around again. I am facing the same way.

It's been the explanation that has helped the most people, young and old, that I've ever used.

[Im_user]

Always informative content, keep it up

[prathmeshbharsakle]

If the education system was this good, people would enjoy studying

[alejrandom]

Man these shorts always give me such nostalgia

[pbesssa]

Thanks for your content. You are helping me doing my Maths Bachelor!

[ericmcdonald]

I love this channel. Very cool stuff. I deleted IG, but I remember following your page there, a long time ago.

[DVegasaYT]

@3blue1brown you helped me in my 1 and 2 year in university to understand algebra and calculus! Thank you for that 😊

[robertallison]

You're doing great work i love it keep it up king 🤴 👏 ❤

[pauselab]

I nice way to think about vectorial spaces are that they are formed of a group of vectors and a field of scalars. The only way they can act on each other is scalar multiplication which is like scaling because scalar x vector is still a vector.

[Heliostat]

I feel like the aha moment I should have had in grade school is grossly unwelcome now, at 2 am on a Monday morning.

[johnchessant]

Q: What do you get when you cross a mosquito with a mountain climber?
A: Nothing. You can't cross a vector with a scalar!

[thesparklingsalt]

I feel childish, but I smiled at "taking the number 2"

[luminous]

I'm definitely not going to question this channel on anything math related, but I always assumed it was called a scalar because all scalars can be found on the number scale. Next I wondered but what if I multiply a vector in the real number space with a complex number, and I came to the conclusion that's not a scaling operation because it moves the vector into the complex number space. But multiplying a vector from the complex number space with a complex number doesn't seem like it would actually scale the vector, more like rotate it. It's hard to imagine for me because even a vector with only 2 complex numbers would have to be represented in 4 dimensions.

So yeah, now I'm wondering if I'm right after all and it was just named after the most obvious case because real numbers are found on the number scale, or if it's named after the scaling operation and not used anywhere outside of vector math.

[gtaman]

Bro explained in one minute what my teacher failed to explain in his entire school life

[Sam_]

That made better sense than my actual linear algebra class

[Kingbimmy]

This channel, Hank Green, Brian Cox, and Neil Degrasse Tyson are my teachers these days :3
(Also Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawkins, god rest their souls 🙏❤️)

[ts.nathan]

Instead of dumping more stuff in a single video about mathematicians, splitting the stuff into a number of and giving in small short videos like this is more useful. More liked.