Choosing normals for non-orientable surfaces

3deuclidean-geometrygeometryorientationplane-geometry

The equation for the angle between two planes, given their normals are $\vec n_1$ and $\vec n_2$, is $$\theta=cos^{-1}\frac{\vec n_1.\vec n_2}{|\vec n_1||\vec n_2|}$$
Now I got the angle to be $\pi -\theta$, because I considered the direction of one normal to be opposite to the correct direction, as is shown here;

I had been thinking of, say $\vec n_Q$, as pointing in the opposite direction.

Looking this up on Wikipedia, apparently there's something called orientability that can help you choose which normal you need to consider. But there's nothing there about planes; just "real projective planes" and other stuff of that sort I don't know anything about right now.

So how do you choose which normal you use in case of simple 3D planes?

Best Answer

The normal of a plane, and the direction of a line, are each unique up to non-zero scalar multiplication.

The angle between two lines, between two planes, and between a line & a plane are each (defined to be) between $0$ and $\frac{\pi}2$ (inclusive); on the other hand, the angle between two vectors is (defined to be) between $0$ and $\pi$ (inclusive).