Find the area of triangle given that is the intersection of the line through and the midpoint of with the plane through and is the midpoint of .
Solution
We place the points in the coordinate plane. We let , , and . The point is the origin, while is . The line through and is the line . The plane through , and has equation . The coordinates of are the coordinates of the intersection of this line and this plane. Equating the equations and solving for and , we see that and , so the coordinates of are . Let be the midpoint of , which has coordinates . By the distance formula, . Thus, the area of is .
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