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Exercises Graphs and straight lines

Example 11.33 from Prealgebra, 11.4 Understand Slope of a Line

Understand Slope of a Line: example 11.33

Use a geoboard to model a line with slope $\frac{−1}{4},$

Work it out on paper first. Then open the solution one step at a time, and stop as soon as you can finish on your own.

Solution

Use the slope formula. $m = \frac{rise}{run}$

Replace $m$ with $− \frac{1}{4}$ . $− \frac{1}{4} = \frac{rise}{run}$

So, the rise is $−1$ and the run is $4 .$

Since the rise is negative, we choose a starting peg on the upper left that will give us room to count down. We stretch the rubber band down $1$ unit, then to the right $4$ units.

The hypotenuse of the right triangle formed by the rubber band represents a line whose slope is $- \frac{1}{4} .$

Your turn

The book's Try It right after this example: same idea, new numbers. Only the answer is given.

Use a geoboard to model a line with the given slope: $m = \frac{−3}{2} .$

How did it go?

PreviousUnderstand Slope of a Line: example 11.32 Next Understand Slope of a Line: example 11.34

From Prealgebra (1st edition) by OpenStax (Rice University), section 11.4, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Original at openstax.org. We split the solution into steps; the words, numbers and figures are the book's. OpenStax doesn't endorse this site.