: Let B ✄ ✍
P1P2 ✄ xˆ4 ✟
yˆ8 and C ✄ ✍
P1P3 ✄ xˆ2 ✟
yˆ2 ✟
zˆ8 represent two sides of
the triangle. Since the magnitude of the cross product is the area of the parallelogram
(see the definition of cross product in Section 3-1.4), half of this is the area of the
triangle: