Phasor

Uncommon card · No. 186846

In physics and engineering, a phasor (a portmanteau of phase vector) is a complex number representing a sinusoidal function whose amplitude A and initial phase θ are time-invariant and whose angular frequency ω is fixed. It is related to a more general concept called analytic representation, which decomposes a sinusoid into the product of a complex constant and a factor depending on time and frequency. The complex constant, which depends on amplitude and phase, is known as a phasor, or complex amplitude, and (in older texts) sinor or even complexor. A common application is in the steady-state analysis of an electrical network powered by time varying current where all signals are assumed to be sinusoidal with a common frequency. Phasor representation allows the analyst to represent the amplitude and phase of the signal using a single complex number. The only difference in their analytic representations is the complex amplitude (phasor). A linear combination of such functions can be represented...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Zureks, Public domain