Orientation (physical)

For other uses, see orientation.

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Orientation means direction of some axis or vector or pseudo-vector. It can be orientation of an arrow of a compass, or orientation of the director in the nematic liquid crystal, as orientation of an electric or magnetic dipole, etc.

For rigid objects, the orientation cannot be described with a single direction; the directions of at least two orthogonal axes, fixed to the body, are needed; these directions can be represented, for instance, by an orientation matrix or by Euler angles (see Orientation (geometry)).

The direction of a real vector field also can be considered as orientation. See Orientation (mathematics).