Try it on paper first. A hint, the key idea and the worked solution are here when you need them.
Two walls of a room lie in the planes and , with lengths in metres. The origin is inside the room. A bracing plate is placed along the plane that bisects the angle between the walls that contains the origin. Write this plate as and find . Find the angle between the plate and the first wall, and say whether the plate bisects an acute or an obtuse angle.
The planes bisecting the angle between two planes are . The plane through a point meeting two lines is the intersection of the plane through the point and each line. A tetrahedron has volume .
Have you tried it?
Work it out on paper first. It is fine to get stuck or make a mistake: that is how we learn. When you are ready, go through the solution one step at a time, and check each step against your own.
Step 1. The bisector. gives . So and .
Step 2. The angle with the first wall. The normals are and . The dot product is . The lengths are and . So and .
Step 3. Acute or obtuse. The dot product of the wall normals is . With positive constants, the plane with the plus sign bisects the obtuse angle. The walls make an acute angle of about and an obtuse angle of about . Half of is about , which agrees.
Answer: , the angle is about , and the plate bisects the obtuse angle.
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