Calculus 3 : Cross Product

Study concepts, example questions & explanations for Calculus 3

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Example Questions

Example Question #41 : Cross Product

Determine the cross product , if  and 

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

The cross product of two vectors is a new vector. In order to find the cross product, it is useful to know the following relationships between the directional vectors:

Note how the sign changes when terms are reordered; order matters!

Scalar values (the numerical coefficients) multiply through, e.g:

With these principles in mind, we can calculate the cross product of our vectors  and 

Example Question #42 : Cross Product

Determine the cross product , if  and 

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

The cross product of two vectors is a new vector. In order to find the cross product, it is useful to know the following relationships between the directional vectors:

Note how the sign changes when terms are reordered; order matters!

Scalar values (the numerical coefficients) multiply through, e.g:

With these principles in mind, we can calculate the cross product of our vectors  and 

The zero result means these two vectors must be parallel.

Example Question #141 : Vectors And Vector Operations

Determine the cross product , if  and 

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

The cross product of two vectors is a new vector. In order to find the cross product, it is useful to know the following relationships between the directional vectors:

Note how the sign changes when terms are reordered; order matters!

Scalar values (the numerical coefficients) multiply through, e.g:

With these principles in mind, we can calculate the cross product of our vectors  and 

Example Question #44 : Cross Product

Determine the cross product , if  and 

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

The cross product of two vectors is a new vector. In order to find the cross product, it is useful to know the following relationships between the directional vectors:

Note how the sign changes when terms are reordered; order matters!

Scalar values (the numerical coefficients) multiply through, e.g:

With these principles in mind, we can calculate the cross product of our vectors  and 

Example Question #41 : Cross Product

Determine the cross product , if  and 

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

The cross product of two vectors is a new vector. In order to find the cross product, it is useful to know the following relationships between the directional vectors:

Note how the sign changes when terms are reordered; order matters!

Scalar values (the numerical coefficients) multiply through, e.g:

With these principles in mind, we can calculate the cross product of our vectors  and 

Example Question #42 : Cross Product

Determine the cross product , if  and 

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

The cross product of two vectors is a new vector. In order to find the cross product, it is useful to know the following relationships between the directional vectors:

Note how the sign changes when terms are reordered; order matters!

Scalar values (the numerical coefficients) multiply through, e.g:

With these principles in mind, we can calculate the cross product of our vectors  and 

Example Question #43 : Cross Product

Which of the following is true? (assume all vectors are -dimensional. is the acute angle between the two vectors.)

Possible Answers:

All of the other answers are false.

Correct answer:

Explanation:

There are a few approaches to answering this.

One is to notice that the right hand side of each equation is some number times some number times some other number, whereas is a vector. It is not possible for a vector to equal a number (or a "scalar" technically), so

, and

are out of the question.

is not correct since the right hand side of the equation is the definition of the dot product of two vectors, which is not represented by the left hand side.

is true. While it's not the definition of the cross product, it is a formula used to find the area of the parallelogram formed by vectors  .

 

Example Question #44 : Cross Product

Evaluate .

Possible Answers:

None of the other answers

Correct answer:

Explanation:

To evaluate the cross product, we use the determinant formula

.

 

So we have

Example Question #45 : Cross Product

Evaluate

Possible Answers:

None of the other answers

Correct answer:

Explanation:

A quick way to answer this is to note that the two vectors point in the same direction (one is a scalar multiple of the other). Hence they are parallel, and their cross product is the zero vector.

We can still use the formula

to evaluate it as well.

 

We have

Example Question #46 : Cross Product

Evaluate the following cross product:

where:

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

The cross product is the determinant of the following matrix:

Which is equal to:

Which, in bracket form, is the same as

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