Bob sent us his solution:
Firstly I multiplied the matricies to find the new point. Using the trigonometric
identities to simplify, I got the new point as
.
This meant that we had rotated the point
degrees anticlockwise. To prove that
, I drew a line XX', which intersects and is parallel
to the line
(call this point of intersection D). But
and so
and
are two right-angled triangles of the same size, so
.
By the same argument I drew lines
and
, and so got right-angled triangles
again, so
.
By looking at the right-angled triangle
, with the angle at
being
,
I knew that:
and so
.
I then looked at the right-angled triangle
, and since the angle at
is
,
. By applying Pythagoras' Theorem to the
right-angled triangle
,
. Finally, applying Pythagoras'
Thereom to the triangle
I found
.
Looking at the change in X co-ordinates, I found
.
So the matrix
for the reflection would be:
You may also like to look at the
problem 'The Matrix' from
July 2003 and its solution for an explanation of how a
transformation of the plane is given by a matrix and how you
can find the image of a point by multiplying its vector by the
matrix of the transformation.