Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2014 / Paper 1 / 14 / a

The nonparallel direction unit vectors have nonzero cross product. LetFor any joining vector $\mathbf{s}=\mathbf{c}-\mathbf{a}+\mu \hat{\mathbf{d}}-\lambda \hat{\mathbf{b}}$, its normal component is fixed:Thus its length is at least the absolute value of that component. Since the two line directions span ${\mathbf{n}}^{\perp }$, suitable $\lambda ,\mu$ cancel the entire component in that plane, attaining the bound. Therefore the distance between skew lines, including the zero-distance intersecting case, isThe numerator is a scalar triple product. The nonparallel hypothesis is essential to the denominator and to the spanning argument.