CROSS PRODUCT TEACH-O-MATIC

By Zach Barth

go to Dot Product Teach-O-Matic

OMGREADMENOTE: The area in pink is the NORM of uxv, not uxv itself.

Unlike dot product, cross product creates a vector (well, pseudo-vector), NOT A "RECTANGULAR" SCALAR! This resultant vector is always orthogonal to two crossed vectors and will have a length of ||u|| * ||v|| * sin(theta), which remarkably resembles dot product.

Important stuff to take note of:

* Why ||uxv|| is the area of a parallelogram *

If you look at the area (pink) that is ||uxv||, it happens to be the area of the parallelogram formed by vectors u and v (just move the triangle left of u to the right side of the area). Isn't that cool?

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