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Corners of a tetrahedron
A tetrahedron has vertices , , and . What is its volume?
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Hint
The box spanned by the edges from the origin has a determinant for its volume, and the tetrahedron fills a fixed fraction of that box.
Solution
- The edges from the origin are , and ; put them as the rows of .
- Expanding along row gives .
- The parallelepiped on these edges has volume , and the tetrahedron on the same edges takes of it.
- So the volume is .
Answer: