About distances between a point and a plane

220 Views Asked by At

I got the an exercise that says:

$P_0=(x_0,y_0,z_0)$ is a point in the plane $ax_0+by_0+cz_0+d=0$. Let $\vec n$ the normal vector of the plane. Get a function that obtains the distance between the point $P_0$ and a point outside of the plane $P_1$.

What I have to do here is just calculate the distance between the point and the plane?

Is the distance between all points in the plane and that point the same?

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On BEST ANSWER

We have a point on the plane $P_0(x_0,y_0,z_0)$ and a point outside the plane $P_1(x_1,y_1,z_1)$. The distance from $P_1$ to the plane is calculated by the magnitude of projection of $\vec{P_0P_1}$ onto the normal of the plane $\vec n$.

We therefore have \begin{align} \left|\operatorname{proj}_{\vec n}\vec{P_0P_1}\right|=\frac{|\vec{P_0P_1}\cdot\vec n|}{|\vec n|}&=\frac{|(x_1-x_0,y_1-y_0,z_1-z_0)\cdot(a,b,c)|}{|(a,b,c)|}\\ &=\frac{|a(x_1-x_0)+b(y_1-y_0)+c(z_1-z_0)|}{\sqrt{a^2+b^2+c^2}}\\ &=\frac{|ax_1-ax_0+by_1-by_0+cz_1-cz_0|}{\sqrt{a^2+b^2+c^2}}\\ \end{align}

Since the equation of the plane is $$ax_0+by_0+cz_0+d=0\implies d=-ax_0-by_0-cz_0,$$ we have the formula $$D=\frac{|ax_1+by_1+cz_1+d|}{\sqrt{a^2+b^2+c^2}}$$ where $D$ is the distance between $P_1$ and the plane.