Question

Consider the line segment with end points (−3, 3) and (−3, −5).

a. What do the end points, which are represented by the ordered pairs, have in common? What does that tell us about the location of the line segment on the coordinate plane?
b. Find the length of the line segment by finding the distance between its end points.

Answer 1

a. The line segment is vertical and lies in 2nd and 3rd quadrant.

b. The length of the segment is 8 units.

Explanation:

We have been given the end points of a line segment.

a. The given coordinates are (−3, 3) and (−3, −5). We can see that x-coordinates of both points are same, which means that the line segment is vertical, which passes the x-axis at
`(-3,0)`.

Since the x-coordinates of both endpoints are negative and y-coordinates are negative and positive, therefore, the line segment lies in 2nd and 3rd quadrant.

b. Since the x-coordinates of both endpoints are same, so the length of the line segment would be difference between the y-coordinates.

`\text{Length of line segment}=3-(-5)`

`\text{Length of line segment}=3+5`

`\text{Length of line segment}=8`

Therefore, the length of the line segment is 8 units.