All High School Math Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #3 : How To Find The Equation Of A Perpendicular Line
Given the equation and the point , find the equation of a line that is perpendicular to the original line and passes through the given point.
In order for two lines to be perpendicular, their slopes must be opposites and recipricals of each other. The first step is to find the slope of the given equation:
Therefore, the slope of the perpendicular line must be . Using the point-slope formula, we can find the equation of the new line:
Example Question #1 : How To Find The Equation Of A Perpendicular Line
What line is perpendicular to through ?
Perdendicular lines have slopes that are opposite reciprocals. The slope of the old line is , so the new slope is .
Plug the new slope and the given point into the slope intercept equation to calculate the intercept:
or , so .
Thus , or .
Example Question #4 : Perpendicular Lines
What is the equation, in slope-intercept form, of the perpendicular bisector of the line segment that connects the points and ?
First, calculate the slope of the line segment between the given points.
We want a line that is perpendicular to this segment and passes through its midpoint. The slope of a perpendicular line is the negative inverse. The slope of the perpendicular bisector will be .
Next, we need to find the midpoint of the segment, using the midpoint formula.
Using the midpoint and the slope, we can solve for the value of the y-intercept.
Using this value, we can write the equation for the perpendicular bisector in slope-intercept form.
Example Question #4 : How To Find The Equation Of A Perpendicular Line
What line is perpendicular to through ?
The equation is given in the slope-intercept form, so we know the slope is . To have perpendicular lines, the new slope must be the opposite reciprocal of the old slope, or
Then plug the new slope and the point into the slope-intercept form of the equation:
so so
So the new equation becomes: and in standard form
Example Question #1 : How To Find The Slope Of A Perpendicular Line
A line passes through the points and . If a new line is drawn perpendicular to the original line, what will its slope be?
The original line has a slope of , a line perpendicular to the original line will have a slope which is the negative reciprocal of this value.
Example Question #1 : How To Find The Slope Of A Perpendicular Line
Which of the following is the equation of a line that is perpendicular to the line ?
Perpendicular lines have slopes that are the opposite reciprocals of each other. Thus, we first identify the slope of the given line, which is (since it is in the form , where represents slope).
Then, we know that any line which is perpendicular to this will have a slope of .
Thus, we can determine that is the only choice with the correct slope.
Example Question #2 : How To Find The Slope Of A Perpendicular Line
What will be the slope of the line perpendicular to ?
In standard form, the is the slope.
The slope of a perpendicular line is the negative reciprocal of the original line.
For our given line, the slope is . Therefore, the slope of the perpendicular line is .
Example Question #4 : How To Find The Slope Of A Perpendicular Line
Which of the following is perpendicular to the line described by
The definition of perpendicular lines is that their slopes are inverse reciprocals of one another. Since the slope in the given equation is , this means that the slope of its perpendicular line would be .
The answer
is the only equation listed that has a slope of .
Example Question #3 : How To Find The Slope Of A Perpendicular Line
Which of the following is perpendicular to the line described by
The definition of perpendicular lines is that their slopes are inverse reciprocals of one another. Since the slope in the given equation is , this means that the slope of its perpendicular line would be .
The answer
is the only equation listed that has a slope of .
Example Question #2 : How To Find The Slope Of A Perpendicular Line
Which of the following gives the slope of a line that is perpendicular to ?
Recall that the slopes of perpendicular lines are opposite reciprocals of one another. As a result, we are looking for the opposite reciprocal of . Thus, we can get that the opposite reciprocal is .