PDF of a short talk by John Browne, Graßmann Bicentennial Conference September 2009, Potsdam, Germany. A conference held to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Grassmann's birth in April 1809.

Many of the capabilities of Graßmann's algebra are still not well-enough known.

This paper briefly draws attention to just one of these: The ability to distinguish mathematically between points and vectors.

We will look at just two applications of this capability:

• Graßmannian geometry.

• Graßmannian mechanics.

None of the examples will require a metric.

The ability to distinguish between points and vectors appears to have been ignored ever since

the adoption of Gibbs three-dimensional vector algebra as the dominant vectorial paradigm.