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Example Questions
Example Question #891 : Gmat Quantitative Reasoning
Given , find the equation of a line that is perpendicular to and goes through the point .
Given
We need a perpendicular line going through (14,0).
Perpendicular lines have opposite reciprocal slopes.
So we get our slope to be
Next, plug in all our knowns into and solve for .
.
Making our answer
.
Example Question #892 : Problem Solving Questions
Given the function , which of the following is the equation of a line perpendicular to and has a -intercept of ?
Given a line defined by the equation with slope , any line that is perpendicular to must have a slope, or the negative reciprocal of .
Since , the slope is and the slope of any line parallel to must have a slope of .
Since also needs to have a -intercept of , then the equation for must be .
Example Question #893 : Problem Solving Questions
Given the function , which of the following is the equation of a line perpendicular to and has a -intercept of ?
Given a line defined by the equation with slope , any line that is perpendicular to must have a slope, or the negative reciprocal of .
Since , the slope is and the slope of any line parallel to must have a slope of .
Since also needs to have a -intercept of , then the equation for must be .
Example Question #894 : Problem Solving Questions
Given the function , which of the following is the equation of a line perpendicular to and has a -intercept of ?
None of the above
Given a line defined by the equation with slope , any line that is perpendicular to must have a slope, or the negative reciprocal of .
Since , the slope is and the slope of any line parallel to must have a slope of .
Since also needs to have a -intercept of , then the equation for must be .
Example Question #895 : Problem Solving Questions
Determine the equation of a line perpendicular to at the point .
The equation of a line in standard form is written as follows:
Where is the slope of the line and is the y intercept. First, we can determine the slope of the perpendicular line using the knowledge that its slope must be the negative reciprocal of the slope of the line to which it is perpendicular. For the given line, we can see that , so the slope of a line perpendicular to it will be the negative reciprocal of that value, which gives us:
Now that we know the slope of the perpendicular line, we can plug its value into the formula for a line along with the coordinates of the given point, allowing us to calculate the -intercept, :
We now have the slope and the -intercept of the perpendicular line, which is all we need to write its equation in standard form:
Example Question #1 : Calculating The Slope Of A Perpendicular Line
What is the slope of the line perpendicular to ?
Perpendicular lines have slopes that are negative reciprocals of each other. Therefore, rewrite the equation in slope intercept form :
Slope of given line:
Negative reciprocal:
Example Question #1 : Calculating The Slope Of A Perpendicular Line
Line 1 is the line of the equation . Line 2 is perpendicular to this line. What is the slope of Line 2?
Rewrite in slope-intercept form:
The slope of the line is the coefficient of , which is . A line perpendicular to this has as its slope the opposite of the reciprocal of :
Example Question #2 : Calculating The Slope Of A Perpendicular Line
Given:
Calculate the slope of , a line perpendicular to .
To find the slope of a line perpendicular to a given line, simply take the opposite reciprocal of the slope of the given line.
Since f(x) is given in slope intercept form,
.
Therefore our original slope is
So our new slope becomes:
Example Question #1 : Calculating The Slope Of A Perpendicular Line
What would be the slope of a line perpendicular to the following line?
The equation for a line in standard form is written as follows:
Where is the slope of the line and is the y intercept. By definition, the slope of a line is the negative reciprocal of the slope of the line to which it is perpendicular. So if the given line has a slope of , the slope of any line perpendicular to it will have the negative reciprocal of that slope. This gives us:
Example Question #2 : Calculating The Slope Of A Perpendicular Line
What is the slope of a line perpendicular to the line of the equation ?
The line has an undefined slope.
The line has an undefined slope.
The graph of for any real number is a horizontal line. A line parallel to it is a vertical line, which has a slope that is undefined.