Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2023 / Paper 2 / 11 / b

If the three vectors lie in one plane through the origin and $\mathbf{u},\mathbf{v}$ are independent, their cross product is a normal vector to that plane, so its dot product with $\mathbf{w}$ is zero. If $\mathbf{u},\mathbf{v}$ are dependent, their cross product is already zero. Thus coplanarity always forces the scalar triple product to vanish.

Taking the contrapositive proves that a nonzero scalar triple product rules out coplanarity. Geometrically its absolute value is the nonzero volume of the spanned parallelepiped.