Vector Calculus and the Geometry of R2 and R3

Geometry of the Cross Product

• Understand the geometric connection between the length of the cross product and the dot product.
• Find the area of a triangle using the cross product.
• Learn some properties of the cross product.
• Use the scalar triple product to find the volume of a parallelepiped.

The dot product identity related the dot product of two vectors
with the cosine of the angle between them.

A similar identity holds for the cross product. The magnitude

of the cross product of two vectors is equal to the product of
the magnitudes of the two vectors multiplied by the sine of
the angle between them.

The sine of the angle between two parallel vectors is always

0. Using the cross product identity and this fact, an important
theorem can be deduced.

Two vectors are parallel if and only if their cross product is

the zero vector.

Another interesting geometric fact about the cross product is

that the length of the cross product of two vectors is actually
equal to the area of the parallelogram determined by the two
vectors.

This fact is easily derived using the cross product identity

and some simple facts from trigonometry. The area of a
parallelogram is base times height. The base times the height
of the pictured parallelogram is the length of the first vector
times the length of the second times the sine of the angle
between them. By the cross product identity, this is precisely
the length of the cross product.

You can use this little fact to find the area of a triangle given
three vertices. You do not need to know anything about the
angles in the triangle. You do not even need to know its
height.

Since the triangle is half of a parallelogram, its area will be

half the area of the parallelogram, two of whose sides are
determined by the given vertices.

Form the vectors that make up the sides of the parallelogram,

take their cross product, and then find the length of the result,
and you have arrived at the area of the parallelogram.

Cut your answer in half, and voila! You have the area of the
triangle.

www.thinkwell.com © Thinkwell Corp. 1 

 

Calculus

Like the dot product, the cross product has many important
properties.

Unlike the dot product, the cross product is not commutative.

In fact, it is anticommutative.

The dot product and cross product can be combined, and

when they are, property 5 holds. It looks like the associative
property in regular arithmetic, but it's not, because the dot
and the cross switch places along with the parentheses.

Because the dot product and the cross product are so closely
tied together geometrically, it is not a surprise that property
6 holds as an identity.

The quantity in property 5 above is a special quantity called

the scalar triple product, obtained by first taking the cross
product of two vectors, and then taking the dot product of
the result with a third vector.

The scalar triple product can be used to find the volume of a

parallelepiped. It turns out that the absolute value of the
scalar triple product of three vectors is exactly equal to the
volume of a parallelepiped that is determined by the three
vectors.

Given a parallelepiped with three sides given by three vectors,

computing the volume is easy, and you don't need to know
anything about the angle between the vectors, or any of the
heights.

Finding the volume is just a matter of computing the scalar

triple product, by first computing the cross product of two of
the vectors, and then taking the dot product of the result with
the remaining vector. The absolute value of the answer is
the cross product.

If you think about this, it is quite amazing. It will always be

true that as long as the three vectors have components that
are integers, the volume of the paralleliped will also always
be an integer.

 2 © Thinkwell Corp. www.thinkwell.com