You probably first came across the idea of vector and scalar quantities when you were introduced to velocity and speed. You will remember that a scalar is something that has size (or magnitude) but no direction (e.g. a speed of 12ms−1) while a vector has both size and direction (e.g. a velocity of 12ms−1 (size) north (direction)). A car driving around a roundabout can move at constant speed, but its velocity is always changing because its direction is always changing.
People can sometimes get confused by the everyday language we use. For example, when someone says the temperature has gone down, they are not using ‘down’ as a direction. They could just as easily say that the temperature has decreased. Temperature is a scalar quantity.
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