Referred to the origin , the points and have position vectors and respectively such that and .
- (i)
It is given that . Using a suitable scalar product, show that .
- (ii)
Deduce the length of projection of onto .
- (iii)
The point lies on such that , where is a positive constant.
Write down the position vector of in terms of , and and show that the area of triangle is .
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Worked solution
8(i)
1. Relate the magnitude of the vector to its scalar product with itself.
2. Expand the scalar product, substitute the known magnitudes, and solve for $\mathbf{a}\cdot\mathbf{b}$.
Substituting and :
\mathbf{a}\cdot\mathbf{b} = 3 \text{ (shown)}
8(ii)
1. Evaluate the length of projection of $\overrightarrow{OA}$ onto $\overrightarrow{OB}$ by substituting the value of $\mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{b}$ from part (i) into the projection formula.
8(iii)
1. Find the position vector of $P$ using the ratio theorem.
Using the ratio theorem, since the point divides in the ratio ,
2. Find the sine of the angle $\theta$ between $\mathbf{a}$ and $\mathbf{b}$.
From part (i), we have . Let be the angle between vectors and .
Since is the angle between two vectors (), .
3. Express the area of triangle $OAP$ using the vector product and simplify.
The area of triangle is given by .
Using the distributive property of the vector product and the fact that :
4. Evaluate the magnitude of the vector product and show the final area.
We evaluate :
Substituting this back into the area equation:
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