Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2002 / Paper 2 / 1 / a / Solution

Three vectors in three-dimensional Euclidean space are non-coplanar precisely when their scalar triple product is nonzero. Put $\Delta =a\cdot (b\times c)\ne 0$. In particular, $a\ne 0$. The identity for cross products with a common vector givesFor completeness, this follows from the vector triple product identity: writing $p=a\times b$ gives $p\times (a\times c)=a(p\cdot c)-c(p\cdot a)$, with $p\cdot c=\Delta$ and $p\cdot a=0$. Therefore the new scalar triple product isThus $a,a\times b,a\times c$ are non-coplanar, or equivalently linearly independent.