These Couple Lines

Geometry Level 4

3 l + m + 5 n = 0 6 m n 2 n l + 5 l m = 0 \begin{aligned} 3 l +m +5 n & =& 0 \\ 6 m n-2 n l+5 l m& =& 0 \\ \end{aligned}

The pair of lines whose direction cosines are given by the two equations above are:


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Inclined at cos 1 ( 1 6 ) \cos^{-1}\left( \frac{1}{6} \right) None of the given. Parallel Perpendicular

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1 solution

Peter Macgregor
Mar 16, 2015

If n = 0 n=0 you find quite quickly that all the direction cosines are 0 0 and it is impossible to determine a line. So let's assume that n 0 n\neq0 .

Since the difference between direction numbers and direction cosines is a numerical factor, and both equation are homogeneous, we can use the given equations to find a triple of direction numbers, say L , M , N {L,M,N} with N 0 N\neq 0 .

We can arbitrarily choose N = 1 N=1 and use the equations to find the other two direction numbers. We have

3 L + M + 5 = 0 ( 1 ) 3L+M+5=0\dots(1)

6 M 2 L + 5 L M = 0 ( 2 ) 6M-2L+5LM=0\dots(2)

It is not hard to use (1) to eliminate M M from (2) leading to

L 2 + 3 L + 2 = 0 L^2+3L+2=0

and so L = 2 L=-2 or L = 1 L=-1

Using (1) we then see that the two possible trios of direction numbers are

a = ( 2 , 1 , 1 ) {a}=(-2,1,1)

b = ( 1 , 2 , 1 ) {b}=(-1,-2,1)

And so the cosine of the angle between the two lines is

a . b a . a × b . b = 1 6 \dfrac{a.b}{\sqrt{a.a\times b.b}}=\dfrac{1}{6}

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