Miscellaneous Exercise · Q15
Q.Prove that , if and only if are perpendicular, given .
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →The dot product expands to . For this to equal , we need , which is exactly the condition for perpendicular (orthogonal) vectors.
The key idea here is that the dot product of a vector with itself gives the square of its magnitude. When we expand , we get three terms: the squares of the magnitudes of and , plus a cross term . The cross term is the only thing that can make the sum different from .
Perpendicular vectors have a dot product of zero — that's the definition. So the problem is really asking: when does the cross term vanish? Let's work through it.
- Expand the left side using the distributive property of the dot product. The dot product is bilinear, meaning we can expand just like algebra:
- Simplify using commutativity and the magnitude relation. Since (dot product is commutative), and , we get:
- Set up the condition given in the problem. We are told that this equals . So:
- Cancel the common terms. Subtract from both sides:
- Conclude the condition. Since , we must have . And by definition, two non-zero vectors are perpendicular (orthogonal) if and only if their dot product is zero. …
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