A component is the a smaller piece of a bigger body. These smaller pieces add up to create something. for example, in general terms your car has a body, power source, braking system, and an electrical system. These four items add up to equal your car. The human body has 206 bones (if the sternum is considered one bone instead of three.) These 206 bones add up to be the skeleton.

When discussing components of vectors the "add" literally means to perform a mathematical summation operation on them.

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