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smc

geometry senior

Problem

On a rectangular parallelepiped, vertices , , and are adjacent to vertex . The perpendicular distance from to the plane containing , , and is closest to
problem
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
Solution
By placing the cube in a coordinate system such that is at the origin, , , and , we find that the equation of plane is: so The equation for the distance of a point to a plane is given by: Note that the capital letters are coefficients, while the lower case is the point itself. Thus, the distance from the origin (where ) to the plane is given by: Since , this number should be just a little over , and the correct answer is . Note that the equation above for the distance from a point to a plane is a 3D analogue of the 2D case of the distance formula, where you take the distance from a point to a line. In the 2D case, both and are set equal to .
Final answer
C