What are vectors, and why should I know about them

Before we dive any further into Newton, forces and other things, lets go a bit into the fantastic world of vectors.
first, a definition. Vectors are defined as things that possess a magnitude as well as direction, in contrast to lowly scalars, which only get magnitude.
"So what is the big deal?", I am sure you ask. Well, it does not seem like much, but let me try to explain it like this.
If you wanted to lift a rock, pushing down on it would not lift it. Instead , you would have to probably pull the rock up, and there you go, one rock lifted. Here, the direction of the force is just as important as the magnitude. So, we can then say that force is a vector. Now how about travelling. Let us say that I have taken my car, driven down from Bangalore all the way to Chennai, and back again. So I have covered 600 (or so) kilometres doing this. My tyres and my petrol tank make that clear. But the fact of the matter is that I have not really moved 600 kilometres from my home...I am back there, lounging. So while the distance travelled might have been 600km, my displacement from my initial condition was zero.
So for now, just remember that a vector is rather more complicated than a scalar, and although the vector may be very strong (has high magnitude), it may not do much to you (beacuase the direction of th high magnitude is low.
We wont even go into tensors, and where they fit into the situation. We can worry about tensors we we come face to face with one!