Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-year-1-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2019/paper-2/11/c/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2019 Paper 2 11 c Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-18
Let . A point on the line has position vector . By bilinearity and antisymmetry of the cross product,For a point with position vector , the area of the parallelogram spanned by and equals base length times perpendicular Euclidean distance. Hence the shortest Euclidean distance to the line isFor , these quantities areThus . The perpendicular meets at , whose displacement from has precisely this length.
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