Find the equation of planes with the provided information.

linear algebravectors

Two planes intersect in the line with vector equation [x,y,z] = [3,5,4] + s[2,3,1]. Point A (0,0,0) lies on the first plane and point B (1,1,1) lies on the second plane. Determine the scalar equations of the two planes?

For this type of question I would usually just do the dot product between: [2s+3, 3s+5, s+4] and B[1,1,1]. Which would let me find the value of s for which B and B' which lies on the line are perpendicular. Afterwards, I would use the cross product between BB' and [2s+3, 3s+5, s+4] to find the normal vector of the second plane. But I wouldn't know how to solve it for point A since it just gives me the value of 0=0.

Best Answer

I am having trouble following your method, but we know that if $\vec n = ( a,b,c )$ is the vector orthogonal to the plane, then the scalar equation for the plane is $ax + by + cz = d$. The most straightforward way to find the vector orthogonal to each plane is to compute the cross product of two vectors that lie on the plane. The problem gives us enough information to do this.

Starting with the first plane, we can compute vectors that point along the plane from point A to some vector that lies on the intersection of the two planes (every point on the line belongs to both planes). Lets take the vector $(3,5,4) - (0,0,0) = (3,5,4)$ and the vector $[(3,5,4) + (2,3,1)] - (0,0,0) = (5,8,5)$. $(3,5,4)$ and $(5,8,5)$ both lie on the first plane and their cross product $(3,5,4)\times (5,8,5)$ will give us the vector orthogonal to both of those vectors, i.e. $\vec n$. Computing this, you should get the vector $(-7, 5, -1)$. Now we have $-7x + 5y -z = d$j. Plugging in any point on the plane, we can solve for $d$. The point $(0,0,0)$ lies on the plane, so $d=0$ and the final equation of the first plane is $-7x + 5y -z = 0$.

I'll let you try the other plane. To recap what I did, I picked three points on the plane: point A, and two points on the line of intersection. Then I computed the vectors pointing from point A to the two other points, and used the two resulting vectors to compute the vector orthogonal to the plane via the cross product, which the scalar equation follows from.

Hope that helps and welcome to math stackexchange!