Having a line and a normal orthogonal to it, how do I find the plane in which the normal will come out from and the line will lie on?
1 Answer
In the three-dimensional affine space $\mathbb{A^3}_{\mathbb{R}}$ (I'm assuming $\mathbb{K}=\mathbb{R}$) a line is defined, in its cartesian form, by the intersection of two planes.
Let $l$:\begin{cases} ax+by+cz+d=0 \\ a'x+b'y+c'z+d'=0 \end{cases} and $\textbf{u}$ a vector orthogonal to the line.
We can consider the pencil of planes with support the line $l$ such that $$\Lambda_{\mu,\eta}: \mu (ax+by+cz+d) + \eta(a'x+b'y+c'z+d')=0$$
that can be written as $x(\mu a + \eta a')+y(\mu b + \eta b')+z(\mu c + \eta c')+\mu d+\eta d'=0$, where $$\textbf{v}=(\mu a + \eta a', \mu b + \eta b',\mu c + \eta c')$$ is the parametrization of its orthogonal vector.
So, in order to find the plane we only have to solve the system $\textbf{v}= \rho \textbf{u}$ (the two vectors have to be proportional).
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$\begingroup$ That solves my problem. But I was looking into the documentation of my programming language/library and found out that a plane can be generated by using 3 points that are on it as long as they are not forming a line. Probably very dummy question: is it possible to get multiple perpendiculars of the unit normal by just swapping x, y and z in different combinations? $\endgroup$ Jul 2, 2020 at 13:22
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$\begingroup$ Sorry, I forgot the terms d and d' (they were not really important for our problem). Now it's correct at all I think. $\endgroup$– VajraJul 2, 2020 at 13:24
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$\begingroup$ I'm not understanding if you are looking for the equation of the plane for those three points or for another thing... $\endgroup$– VajraJul 2, 2020 at 13:26
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1$\begingroup$ Never mind. I got the problem solved with your main answer already. Thanks. $\endgroup$ Jul 2, 2020 at 13:37
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T
be? @psidaga exactly. $\endgroup$