

Here is the difficult part of finding the slope of the line perpendicular to the positively sloping line: The two lines may not be oriented on a coordinate grid so that one of them lines up with (or is parallel to) either the x-axis or y-axis.

Perpendicular lines are lines intersecting at 90 °.
#FINDING SLOPE #1 GRAPHING METHOD HOW TO#
In plane geometry, negatives are found in slopes that go "downhill." How To Find Perpendicular Slope The negative of a negative number is a positive number.įor practice, find the negative values of: The negative of a positive number is a negative number.

You may notice all you are doing with fractions is having the numerator and denominator switch places. Practice by finding reciprocals of these numbers: Reciprocals are two values such that multiplying them gives a product of 1, like 1 2 and 2 1: Mathematically, it is the change in y-value compared to its change in x-value.Ī perpendicular slope is the negative reciprocal of any other slope. The slope of a line is its angle, or steepness, compared to that x-axis value. All slopes are compared to some other line, usually an x-axis. In plane geometry, all lines have slopes. A vertical line is perpendicular to a horizontal line. When two lines intersect at right angles, they are perpendicular lines, and we can measure their slope. When two lines intersect, they must do one of two things: intersect at right angles or intersect at other angles. All pairs of lines in geometry must do one of two things: intersect or not intersect.
