Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2018 / ia / Paper 1 / 5C (Vectors and Matrices)

The dot product and Euclidean norm are $\mathbf{x}\cdot \mathbf{y}={\sum }_i{x}_i{y}_i$ and $|\mathbf{x}|=\sqrt{\mathbf{x}\cdot \mathbf{x}}$. For every real $t$,Its quadratic discriminant is nonpositive, proving the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality $|\mathbf{x}\cdot \mathbf{y}|\le |\mathbf{x}||\mathbf{y}|$. In the inequality asked for, equality holds exactly when $\mathbf{x}$ is a positive scalar multiple of $\mathbf{y}$, and

Using the Levi-Civita symbol and its contraction identity,

Put $T=\mathbf{a}\cdot (\mathbf{b}\times \mathbf{c})$, the scalar triple product. Cyclic symmetry gives $\mathbf{m}\cdot \mathbf{a}=\mathbf{m}\cdot \mathbf{b}=\mathbf{m}\cdot \mathbf{c}=T$, so each requested angle $\varphi$ satisfies $\cos \varphi =T/|\mathbf{m}|$. If every pairwise angle is $\theta$ and $t=\cos \theta$, the preceding identity givesand therefore $|\mathbf{m}|=\sqrt{3}(1-\cos \theta )$. This is $0$ when $\theta =0$; for a right-handed orthonormal basis and $\theta =\pi /2$, $\mathbf{m}=\mathbf{a}+\mathbf{b}+\mathbf{c}$ has norm $\sqrt{3}$.

The three planes have equations $\mathbf{a}\cdot \mathbf{x}=\mathbf{a}\cdot \mathbf{p}$, $\mathbf{b}\cdot \mathbf{x}=\mathbf{b}\cdot \mathbf{q}$, and $\mathbf{c}\cdot \mathbf{x}=\mathbf{c}\cdot \mathbf{r}$. They meet at one point exactly when $\Delta =\mathbf{a}\cdot (\mathbf{b}\times \mathbf{c})\ne 0$, meaning their normals are linearly independent vectors. The point is