How do I find the slope of a perpendicular line?

1 answer:

4 0

Yes, math can be challenging sometimes (mostly due to the horrible way its taught by teachers but I wont go on a rant about that today).

The Slope of a parallel line is obviously going to have the same slope as the line it is parallel to, which you already know.

But for perpendicular, how would we figure that out?

First, you need to understand whats going on. Picture a linear line. Now, look at the (0,0) point. To make it perpendicular, it must form 90 degrees with the other line. Now, to get the answer for a perpendicular line, you need to remember two steps.

1.) Change the sign to the opposite sign (negative would go positive and positive would go negative)

2.) You take the reciprocal of the line (That is what times that number would make that number equal one. 2 * 1/2 would be 1. You can also look at this by switching the denominator and numerator.

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PLEASE HELP 8th GRADE MATH QUESTION OVER HERE!!!

patriot [66]

The side AB measures option 2. $\sqrt{20}}$ units long.

Step-by-step explanation:

Step 1:

The coordinates of the given triangle ABC are A (4, 5), B (2, 1), and C (4, 1).

The sides of the triangle are AB, BC, and CA. We need to determine the length of AB.

To calculate the distance between two points, we use the formula $d=\sqrt{\left(x_{2}-x_{1}\right)^{2}+\left(y_{2}-y_{1}\right)^{2}}.$

where ( $x_{1},y_{1}$ ) are the coordinates of the first point and ( $x_{2},y_{2}$ ) are the coordinates of the second point.

Step 2:

For A (4, 5) and B (2, 1), ( $x_{1},y_{1}$ ) = (4, 5) and ( $x_{2},y_{2}$ ) = (2, 1). Substituting these values in the distance formula, we get

$d=\sqrt{\left(2-4\right)^{2}+\left(1-5}\right)^{2}} = \sqrt{\left(2\right)^{2}+\left(4}\right)^{2}}=\sqrt{20}}.$