Lines and Planes

Intersection of two planes

If two distinct planes in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) are not parallel, they intersect, and the intersection forms a line. A natural question is to find an equation of that line.

For an equation of a line, we need a point on the line and its direction vector. Since the line lies in both of the planes, its direction vector must be orthogonal to both of the normal vectors. Let’s look at few examples:

Couple of examples

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Intersection of a line and a plane

If a line is not parallel to a plane, it will intersect it at a single point. Finding this point is simple: we just need to find the time at which the coordinates of a moving object described by the parametric equations of the line satisfy the equation of the plane:

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Equation of a plane containing a given line and a given point.

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Equation of a plane perpendicular to a given line, containing a given point.

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