I'm reading Chris Hecker's third article on rigid body dynamics http://chrishecker.com/Rigid_body_dynamics
Quoting...
"More importantly, if our collision detector supplies us with a 'normal vector' for the collision (denoted by n, and pointing toward body A by convention), we can define the 'relative normal velocity' as the component of the relative velocity in the direction of the collision normal."
Which he defines as vAB . n where vab is the relative velocity of points A and B and n is the normal vector for the collision.
I read Understanding Dot and Cross Product which explains that the dot product gives the length of one vector in the direction of another, which I think is what is being applied here, but I'm having a really hard time visualizing what is going on, specifically what the component is.
Can anyone help explain what this component is and how using the dot product helps identify it?