Versor

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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 versor (or normalized vector) \boldsymbol{\hat{u}} of a non-zero vector \boldsymbol{u} is the unit vector codirectional with \boldsymbol{u}, i.e.,
\boldsymbol{\hat{u}} = \frac{\boldsymbol{u}}{\|\boldsymbol{u}\|}.
where \|\boldsymbol{u}\| is the norm (or length) of \boldsymbol{u}.

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