Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2007 / ia / Paper 1 / 1A / ii / Solution

Use suffix notation, summing repeated indices, and the Levi-Civita symbol convention $(A\times B{)}_i={ϵ}_{ijk}{A}_j{B}_k$. Contracting the outer symbol with the symbol from the second cross product gives the epsilon-delta identitywhere $\delta$ is the Kronecker delta. ThusThe second term is zero because $A_p{A}_{\ell }$ is symmetric in $p,\ell$ and the Levi-Civita symbol is antisymmetric. The cyclic rearrangement of the remaining symbol has positive sign. Its contraction is the scalar triple product $A\cdot (B\times C)$. HenceThis cross products with a common vector identity requires no independence assumption, so it also covers zero or parallel vectors.