230 m2p2 cross prod demo

Cross product demonstration

The dots at the end of

and

may be manipulated. Drag them as you see fit to show how the cross product,

, changes. (Tapping on a dot directly changes the directions available to move each dot.) As you manipulate

and

by moving their respective dots around, please observe the following: (1)

(and

) is orthogonal to both

and

(2)

points in the opposite direction as

(3) The magnitude of

, denoted

, can be represented by the area of the pink parallelogram.