Thread: Question on skew lines

The question is attached (#1, parts a and b). I have no idea how to do part b and as for part a. I don't remember what I did but when I try to think about the problem: I see that to find that the lines do not intersect I need to find that there is an inconsistence between the s[7,-1,-2] and t[1,1,2] slopes. (Is that what they're called?) Also, to find that they're not parallel I need some matrix to have only nonzero rows but I am confused as to which matrix I look at for the parallel one. Is it the same as the one where I looked for the inconsistence?

If I'm unclear, please tell me.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!
Thanks in advance!

If you really want help then you will type out the question in a readable format.

The question is already typed. (Could you rephrase your question please?)

Originally Posted by s3a

The question is already typed. (Could you rephrase your question please?)

Well good luck with that non responsive reply.

I still don't get the problem, are you not able to see the image or something? I retyped it though like you asked:

"Consider the lines l1: [-5,4,3] + s[7,-1,-2] and l2: [4,-1,8] + t[1,1,2].
(a) Show that l1 and l2 are skew lines.
(b) What is the distance between l1 and l2?"

Given two skew lines:
then the distance between them is
.

In this question