In geometry, the perpendicular distance from a point, P, to a line, L, is the distance from P to L, measured along a line which is perpendicular to L and passes through P.
In three dimensions, a perpendicular distance may also be the distance from a point to a plane, measured along the line that passes through the point and is perpendicular to the plane. Also, it can be the distance between two non-coplanar lines, measured along the line that has perpendicular intersections with them both.
Read more about Perpendicular Distance: Formulae (two Dimensions), Proof (Two Dimensions), Proof (Higher Dimensions), See Also
Famous quotes containing the word distance:
“Though there were numerous vessels at this great distance in the horizon on every side, yet the vast spaces between them, like the spaces between the stars,—far as they were distant from us, so were they from one another,—nay, some were twice as far from each other as from us,—impressed us with a sense of the immensity of the ocean, the “unfruitful ocean,” as it has been called, and we could see what proportion man and his works bear to the globe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)