Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2021 / Paper 1 / 6 / Solution

Both segments start at $(1,1,1)$, so their direction vectors are $\mathbf{a}=(-1,-1,-1)$ and $\mathbf{b}=(1,1,0)$. Their dot product is $-2$, and their norms are $\sqrt{3}$ and $\sqrt{2}$. ThusThe angle between the rays lies in $[0,\pi ]$, so its sine is nonnegative:The negative cosine correctly identifies an obtuse angle. One also obtains the sine from $|\mathbf{a}\times \mathbf{b}|/(|\mathbf{a}||\mathbf{b}|)=\sqrt{2}/\sqrt{6}$, using the cross product.