[Tex/LaTex] Breaking equation – Problem with brackets

equations

I want to break a long equation in LaTex. I have tried multline and align but I always get errors with the brackets.

\begin{equation}
\dfrac{dr_{ij}}{dt} = \frac{1}{2r_{ij}} \left[ 2 \left( x_{i}-x_{j} \right) \left( \dfrac{dx_{i}}{dt} - \dfrac{dx_{j}}{dt} \right) + 2 \left( y_{i}-y_{j} \right) \left( \dfrac{dy_{i}}{dt} - \dfrac{dy_{j}}{dt} \right) + 2 \left( z_{i}-z_{j} \right) \left( \dfrac{dz_{i}}{dt} - \dfrac{dz_{j}}{dt} \right) \right] 
\end{equation}

I want to break it in a way, so that all the three "2"s are below each other. How can I do that without getting an error with the brackets?

Best Answer

This is a job for split:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
\frac{dr_{ij}}{dt} =
\frac{1}{2r_{ij}} \biggl[
  & 2 \left( x_{i}-x_{j} \right) \left( \dfrac{dx_{i}}{dt} - \dfrac{dx_{j}}{dt} \right) + {}\\
  & 2 \left( y_{i}-y_{j} \right) \left( \dfrac{dy_{i}}{dt} - \dfrac{dy_{j}}{dt} \right) + {}\\
  & 2 \left( z_{i}-z_{j} \right) \left( \dfrac{dz_{i}}{dt} - \dfrac{dz_{j}}{dt} \right)
  \biggr]
\end{split}
\end{equation}
\end{document}

enter image description here

Note that we have to manually specify the size for the outermost braces, because \left and \right cannot be divided across lines.