This week in Pre-Calculus 11 we reviewed for our midterm. So we are suppose to blog about something we haven’t blogged about yet. I chose the discriminant because it was something I struggled with until review this week. The discriminant is how we determine how many solutions there are. Here is how to find the discriminants . This connects to the quadratic formula, the pink is the discriminant formula.

So you can have 2 solutions, 1 solution, or no solution.

a=1, b=-6, c=5

Plug in a, b, and c.

36-20

16 gives 2 solutions

This parabola crosses the x-axis twice giving us two solutions.

a=1, b=-6, c=9

Plug in a, b, and c.

36-36

0 gives one solution

The parabola crosses the x-axis once meaning there is only one solution.

a=1, b=-6, c=13

Plug in a, b, and c.

36-52

-16 gives no solution

The parabola never crosses the x-axis so there is no solution.