How do you find the components of a vector?
Sometimes it is more useful for us to represent a vector in terms of other vectors added together. For example, we can split a vector into the vectors pointing in the direction of our axes, we call these seperate vectors our components. These components when added together will equal our original vector. To find our components, we use trigonometry. If we know the angle between our vector and the horizontal (or x) axis, we can use the cosine function to calculate the horizontal component. Similarly, our vertical component is found using the sine function.
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