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Cross Product and Area in the Plane

The document discusses geometry in the plane and the cross product of vectors. It presents three facts: 1) The area of two vectors in the plane is the absolute value of the determinant of their matrix. 2) If a triangle's vertices have integer coordinates, its area is an integer or half integer. 3) The area of a triangle with vertices (x1, y1), (x2, y2), (x3, y3) is (1/2) times the absolute value of a determinant formula provided. Proofs are requested for the first two facts.

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44 views1 page

Cross Product and Area in the Plane

The document discusses geometry in the plane and the cross product of vectors. It presents three facts: 1) The area of two vectors in the plane is the absolute value of the determinant of their matrix. 2) If a triangle's vertices have integer coordinates, its area is an integer or half integer. 3) The area of a triangle with vertices (x1, y1), (x2, y2), (x3, y3) is (1/2) times the absolute value of a determinant formula provided. Proofs are requested for the first two facts.

Uploaded by

Sam
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

April 6, 2019

The Cross Product and geometry in the Plane

Math Honors Topics - SPA

We showed in class that the length of the cross product of two vectors in three dimensions is the area of the parallel-
ogram spanned by the two vectors. A corollary of this fact is that the area spanned by two vectors in the plane is the
absolute value of the determinant of the matrix which has the two vectors as its rows (or columns!).

1. Prove this fact by considering the two vectors as actually being in 3D, but with their z component being zero.

2. Another corollary of this is: if a triangle in the plane has its vertices on points where both coordinates are
integers, then the area is either an integer or a integer divided by two. Prove this fact.

3. Use the fact above to show that if a triangle has vertices at (x1 , y1 ), (x2 , y2 ), (x3 , y3 )
1
then the area of the triangle = (x1 y2 − x1 y3 ) − (x2 y1 − x2 y3 ) + (x3 y1 − x3 y2 )

2

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