Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2017 / Paper 2 / 6 / a / Solution

In orthonormal Cartesian coordinates, a rank-$n$ tensor has components transforming under a change of axes $R$ asRepeated indices are summed. This is the tensor component transformation law; for rank one it is precisely the transformation law of a vector.

Use the vector triple product to write the double cross product asBoth dot products are invariant under an orthogonal change of axes, while $u^{\prime }=Ru$ and ${\Omega }^{\prime }=R\Omega$. ThereforeHence $W$ is a vector. This argument also avoids the sign issue for an individual cross product under an orientation-reversing orthogonal transformation: the double product has two such factors, whose signs cancel.