Equation of Plane
The equation of plane passing through and perpendicular to the vector
is
Tangent Planes and Normal
Vectors to Level Surfaces
The tangent line to the curve at the point is
where
Tangent planes to level surfaces
Let the surface is represented by equations of the form . If has
continuous first-order partial derivatives, and if , then near the
graph of is indeed a “surface” rather than some possibly exotic-
looking set of points in 3-space. A tangent plane to S at a point to be
composed of the tangent lines at of all curves on S that pass
through (Figure). Suppose C is a curve on S through that is
parametrized by x = x(t), y = y(t), z = z(t) with = x(), = y(), and = z()
i.e the equation of the curve is k. The tangent line to C through is
then parallel to the vector k, assume that Since C is on the surface ,
we have
Tangent planes to level surfaces
Computing the derivative at of both sides of (1), we have by the chain rule that
We can write this equation in vector form as
Or,
It follows that if , then is normal to line l. Therefore, the tangent line l to C at is
contained in the plane through whose normal vector is . Thus, the tangent
plane to S at to be the plane through whose normal vector is
Tangent Plane and Normal Line
We can also write the equation (3) as
)i+)j+
Angle between two Planes
Two distinct intersecting planes determine two positive angles of intersection
—an(acute) angle that satisfies the condition and the supplement of that
angle (Fig. a ). If and are normal to the planes, then depending on the
directions of and ,the angle θ is either the angle between and or the angle
between and (Fig. b). In both cases, formula for the acute angle between
the planes is:
Sol: (a) Give that
and
So, +
At ,
Hence the equation of tangent plane is
(b) We know the parametric equation of normal line is
,,z
Given that
We have
So, the parametric equation of normal line is
(c) To find the acute angle θ between the tangent plane and the xy-plane, we
have to find the normal vector at the point (1, 2, 1) of the planes.
The normal vector to the obtained plane is and the normal vector to the xy-
plane is
So the acute angle θ is
Thus
Proof: Consider the function . We know the equation of plane on the surface ,
We will apply this formula for the surface . The partial derivatives of are
,,
So, at the point
,,
Thus equation (1) becomes at the point
or,
Tangent Lines to Intersections of
Surfaces
Tangent Lines to Intersections of Surfaces
In general, the intersection of two surfaces and will be a curve in 3-space. If is
a point on this curve, then will be normal to the surface at and will be
normal to the surface at . Thus, if the curve of intersection can be smoothly
parametrized, then its unit tangent vector at will be orthogonal to both and
(Fig.). Consequently, if
then this cross product will be parallel to and hence will be tangent to the
curve of intersection. This tangent vector can be used to determine the
direction of the tangent line to the curve of intersection at the point .
Example: Find parametric equations of the tangent line to the curve of intersection
of the paraboloid and the ellipsoid at the point
Sol: The given equation of surfaces can be written as
and
Let and
So, , hence
, hence
Thus, a tangent vector at (1,1,2) to the curve of intersection is
Since any scalar multiple of this vector will do just as well, we can multiply by 1/2 to reduce
the size of the coefficients and use the vector of 6i−7j−2k to determine the direction of the
tangent line. This vector and the point (1,1,2) give the parametric equations of the tangent line
Linear approximation and
Tangent
If a function is differentiable at a point , then the local linear
approximation L(x,y) to f at has the equation
We can notice that the equation is identical to that of the tangent
plane to at the point . Thus, the graph of the local linear approximation
to at the point is the tangent plane to the surface at the point .
