G.MATH
VECTOR INTEGRAL CALCULUS
Tangent Plane

Using the previous theorems, we shall specify a method in finding the tangent plane to a level surface.

Remember that although we can’t sketch the function , we can sketch a level surface of that function given by .
VIDEO LECTURE


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CONCEPT
We will let  as our function to study. The level surface we will use is  which gives us the cone

We then use the del operator on .

where

Other than the origin, the gradient  can be drawn as an arrow point into the cone and perpendicular to the side of the cone at any one point.
In other words,  is perpendicular to the position vector  at  as shown below.

Explicitly, we can also show that these two vectors are indeed perpendicular by calculating their dot product.

since on the surface, .

We can use the gradient vector to find the tangent plane to the level surface  at any point  where the gradient is not 0 and is defined. This can be done by simple vector algebra.

We know that  is on the tangent plane and vector  is a vector parallel to the tangent plane and hence is perpendicular to  and so

 

After multiplying, this gives us the equation

which turns out to be our equation for the tangent plane at .

All information presentated, less questions and exercises, is original content of Donny, with slight references to various books.
Video courtesy of YouTube.com service.
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