How to describe a normal to a surface?

Question

I would like to describe a normal to a surface. The direction of this normal might be from or toward the surface. I wrote the following sentence:"This is to find if the normal to the surface is considered from or toward that surface"However, I don't really like what I wrote. Please, is there a better way to describe the situation?

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

Mazin Ghazia better way to describe the situation?

You may be thinking of inward-pointing and outward-pointing normals.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal (geometry)

By reading that article you may be able to see a way of describing what you are interested in. Your question is more mathematical than grammatical, so I think you would do better to ask it on a mathematics forum.

The following is from the article referenced above. I don't know if it will help, but maybe it will.

A normal to a surface does not have a unique direction; the vector pointing in the opposite direction of a surface normal is also a surface normal. For a surface which is the topological boundary of a set in three dimensions, one can distinguish between the inward-pointing normal and outer-pointing normal, which can help define the normal in a unique way. For an oriented surface, the surface normal is usually determined by the right-hand rule. If the normal is constructed as the cross product of tangent vectors (as described in the text above), it is a pseudovector.

The first paragraph at this link may also help: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NormalVector.html

CJ

How to describe a normal to a surface?

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