The University of Sydney - School of Mathematics and Statistics

Unit vectors and how to get them	Page 3 of 3

It is often useful to be able to find a unit vector (a vector of length 1) in the direction of a given non-zero vector v. A common notation used for this unit vector is .

For example, if v has length 3, then = v has length 1 and is in the same direction as v.

In general, the unit vector in the same direction as v is

Since = , we also have v = |v|.