Vectors , and are such that and .
- (i)
Show that , where is a constant.
- (ii)
It is now given that and are unit vectors, that the modulus of is and that the angle between and is . Using a suitable scalar product, find exactly the two possible values of .
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Worked solution
1(i)
1. Use the anticommutative property of the vector product to rewrite the right side of the equation.
Given .
Since , we have:
2. Rearrange the terms and factorise using the distributive property.
3. Deduce the relationship between the vectors from the zero vector product.
The vector product of and is the zero vector. Since it is given that , it must be that the vector is parallel to (or is the zero vector itself).
Therefore, we can write:
where is a scalar constant. (Shown)
Shown that through vector product properties.
1(ii)
1. Take the scalar product of the vector equation from part (i) with itself.
Using the result from (i), . Taking the scalar product of both sides with themselves:
2. Evaluate the scalar product $\mathbf{a} \cdot \mathbf{c}$.
Using the definition of the scalar product with the given angle and magnitudes:
3. Substitute the known values into the expanded equation to solve for $\lambda$.
Substitute , , and into the expanded equation:
AI analysis — may contain mistakes.
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