this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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Velocity is speed and direction. So "16.4 mph north" is sufficient.
No, it's not. "North" is a two dimensional direction on the surface of the earth. But we live, and can throw babies, in three dimension. Therefore you need to specify the inclination as well. "56 furlongs per minute, north, 0.3 radians" would suffice.
The surface of the Earth is 3d object, thus moving North is a 3d vector which modifies the baby's velocity relative to the Earth's center of gravity as it curves the movement of the baby flying through the air.
The problem is that there are an infinite number of directions that are going north. Going north parallell to the ground is not the same direction as an upwards or downwards path. You can have any inclination between (-pi/2, pi/2) and still be going north. If you don't specify the inclination, it is likely to be assumed to be zero, i.e. the baby is moving parallell to the earths normal plane, but it's it is uncertain. That's why you need two vectors in 3d space.
I suppose I see "North" as more of a function rather than a variable. When you specify North you're specifying a relative direction. Because the vector one takes to go North from the US is not the same vector one takes from Russia. The issue is we're mapping a direction to a point on a sphere So yes North isn't an absolute vector, but it is a shortcut to calculating the vector to the location you want to go. If I was writing this function, I could easily add in a check to determine if we're heading towards the equator before we hit North or not based on the vector direction. And just keep it stuck to the sphere's normal. The initial inclination would be used for calculating the initial vector. I think our wires are getting crossed cause I'm used to 3d programming and velocity is usually
spd * (x, y, z)and the inclinations and such you're speaking of are baked into the(x, y, z)vector that is calculated to determine the "direction" part of the "direction + magnitude" definition of a vector. (I'm enjoying this by the way)It is not. It's not in metric.