[Math] Orthonormal basis for orthogonal complement

linear algebra

I need to find the orthonormal basis for the orthogonal complement of $U = sp{(3,12,-1)}$

(U is a subset of $R^3$).

This is what I have done so far:

$V^⊥ = {(x,y,z)|(x,y,z)(3,12,-1)=0}$

$3x+12y-z=0$

$V^⊥ = $ $sp{(-4,1,0)(\frac13,0,1)}$

Now I turn the basis of $V^⊥$ to an orthogonal basis:

$(-4,1,0)-\frac{(\frac13,0,1)(-4,1,0)}{||(-4,1,0)||^2}(-4,1,0)$

$=(\frac{-272}{3},\frac{68}{3},1)$

$V^⊥ = $ $sp{(-4,1,0)(\frac{-272}{3},\frac{68}{3},1)}$

1.) I'm not sure I solved it the right way so far?

2.) And also , how do I find the Orthonormal basis, I know that each of the vectors absolute value needs to = 1.

Best Answer

To simplify the calculations, let $v_1=(1,0,3)$ and $v_2=(-4,1,0)$.

Then to get an orthogonal basis, we can use (as you did)

$w_2=v_2-\frac{v_2\cdot v_1}{v_1\cdot v_1}v_1=(-4,1,0)-\frac{-4}{10}(1,0,3)=(-4,1,0)+(\frac{2}{5},0,\frac{6}{5})=(-\frac{18}{5},1,\frac{6}{5}).$

Now we can replace $w_2$ by $5w_2=(-18,5,6)$ for convenience, and

then normalize the vectors to get an orthonormal basis (as you remarked).

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