Is area inherently a vector? I keep seeing everyone say vector is a scalar, then someone else says it's a vector, then others say it's both. It's really confusing me as to which it is. So I'm wondering this:
Is the basic meaning of area a vector quantity in and of itself? Please tell me why your answer is what it is in a not too advanced way, because I've only learned about vector addition and subtraction so far.
 A: Area is not 'meant' to be anything. We can define area however we like. For most purposes, area can be defined as a scalar quantity. However, for a planar surface, we can also define area as a vector with magnitude equal to the area of the surface and direction perpendicular to the surface (and a rule to determine which one of the two perpendicular direction will our vector point to).
As I said, the scalar areas work just fine for our needs in most cases and it would be simply unnecessary to associate a direction with area. But in some fields, it's actually useful to define area as vector.
For example, the equations that determine the flux through a surface are much simpler to write in terms of vector areas than the scalar ones as explained in this Wikipedia article:
"The concept of an area vector simplifies the equation for determining the flux through the surface. Consider a planar surface in a uniform field. The flux can be written as the dot product of the field and area vector. This is much simpler than multiplying the field strength by the surface area and the cosine of the angle between the field and the surface normal."
A: As long as we are in a finite number of dimensions a vector would imply that there is a direction involved.  An area is directionless -- no matter which way you look at it you get the same number, so that makes it a scalar.  Whereas, if you are driving a car, you are going in a particular direction; if you turn around and go back, the direction reverses and the vector describing your progess has to change too.
