26 Three-Dimensional

Geometry

Objective of the Activity

To demonstrate the equation of the plane in normal form.

Pre-requisite Knowledge
❖❖ Knowledge of position vector of two points in a plane. Knowledge about equation of a plane
etc.

Materials Required
✧✧ Two thick card board sheets
✧✧ Wooden stick
✧✧ Some straight wire
✧✧ White paper sheet
✧✧ Arrow heads
✧✧ Glue sticks etc.

Logical Steps of the Activity

1. Take two thick card board sheets of suitable size and fix a wooden stick between them as
shown in the figure. The wooden stick should be perpendicular to both the card board
sheets. Here the card board sheets represents two planes and the wooden stick represents
the normal to the planes and here O is assumed as a origin.

2. Now fix three straight pieces of wires as OA, OB and AB as shown in figure. Here A and B
are any two points on the plane P1.

3. Now stick paper arrow head on the wooden stick ON and on the three wires OA, OB and
AB as shown in the figure.

These arrow heads show ON, OA, OB and AB as vectors.

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Observation
  
1. Now we observe that O is the origin and ON is the normal to the plane P1. Let ON = n.
 
2. Let a be the position vector of A, and b is the position vector of B.
   
So OA = a and OB = b
  
∵ OA + AB = OB
    
⇒ AB = OB − OA = b − a
     
3. The vector AB = b − a lies on the plane P1 and vector n is perpendicular to b − a. So
  
( )
b − a ⋅ n = 0 [if two vectors are perpendicular then their scalar or dot product is 0] Hence
  
( )
b − a ⋅ n = 0 is the equation of plane P1 in the normal form.

Result
  
( )
From the above activity we conclude that the equation of a plane in normal form is b − a ⋅ n = 0

Application

This activity is helpful to show the position vector of a point in space [i.e., a be the position

vector of 0, r be the position vector of B].

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