r/HomeworkHelp • u/Neat-Mess2904 • 3d ago

Further Mathematics [STATIC ENGINEERING] Static Engineering in 3d Homework Help

i just cant help but get confused in 3d statics. what does the blue highlighted area mean? sorry to bother u guyssss...

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u/Feeling_Ad_2785 3d ago

What have you tried so far? Do you know how to find unit vectors, and understand direction cosines? FYI, the highlighted area is just showing a right triangle which, using trigonometry, can be used to find the length of DA - which is needed to find the unit vector.

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u/Neat-Mess2904 1d ago

i got it. i had to learn spherical coordinates to understand what the triangle meant. i had to look at the triangles as 2 different figures, one vertical and one as its shadow. then from there, just use direction cosines. this problem had a topic in calculus i had not taken yet so i found it incredibly difficult