Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2003 / Paper 2 / 6 / a / Solution

Under an orthogonal Cartesian change of axes $Q$, the vector components transform as $v_i^{\prime }=Q_{ia}{v}_a$, while $v_k^{\prime }{v}_k^{\prime }=v_a{v}_a$ and ${\delta }_{ij}=Q_{ia}{Q}_{ja}$. Substitution givesThis is the rank-two Cartesian tensor transformation law. The nonzero assumption ensures that the denominator is positive. In matrix form $P=I-v{v}^T/(v^{T}v)$ is the orthogonal projection matrix onto the orthogonal complement of $v$.