If you have two forces pulling at the same point from different directions, is that any different from one force pulling halfway between them? The answer is no. [Parallelogram Example] As you can see on the right, the two forces (with the magnitude of the force represented by the length of the line) have been used as two sides of a parallelogram. The diagonal drawn across is the direction and magnitude of the resultant. A resultant is the single force that can represent the two original forces. This is a simple, graphical way to add two forces together and is referred to as the Parallelogram Law.

Here's the part we'll be using again: using the same reasoning, this time backwards, one force can be broken down into two. This is called breaking a force into its components. This is especially useful if you place your force in a coordinate plane (like graph paper) and line those two new forces along the x and y axes (the horizontal and vertical lines). From this, you can make a vector, a mathematical way to represent a force by its components.

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