I learned slope of a line segment this week.

The slope of a line segment is a measure of the steepness of the line segment.

Steepness: It is a very rapid rise or fall from high to low or low to high.

Example: A ramp is steeper than a straight road.

SLOPE FORMULA: Slope=

Rise and run used in the formula represent the x and y axes in a grid. y represents rise and x represents run.

• So, to find the slope of a line segment, we need to find the length of rise and run, place them in the formula and find the result.

For Example:

For AB: We see that the line segment AB is 2 squares long on rise and 7 squares long on run. And now all we have to do is place these two numbers in the formula. Here the answer will be

For EF: We see that the line segment EF is 5 squares long on rise and 3 squares long on run. There is something to pay attention to here. And this line segment EF is going downwards. So rise must be a negative value. Since we found the value of Rise to be 5, this will be negative five since the line segment goes downwards. Here the answer will be .

• The same goes for runes. If the line segment goes towards the left side of the grid, then the value we find in run will be a negative value.

For DC: We see that the line segment DC is 5 squares long on rise and 4 squares long on run. And now all we have to do is place these two numbers in the formula. Here the answer will be . There is no negative value here because the line segment goes both up and to the right in the grid.

The line segments in the two grids above have one thing in common. That is, their rises or runs have a value of zero. As we can see, the line segments in the grid on the right have only horizontal values. So they have a value in run. In the grid on the left, line segments have a value only vertically. So it has a value in its rise. This means that when we place the rises and runs of these line segments into the formula, we will get a different result. Because there will be a zero value in the numerator or denominator in the formula.

The slope formula for the line segments in the left grid will be like this: . Since zero divided by any number will always give us the result zero, the slope value of such line segments is always 0.

The slope formula for the line segments in the right grid will be like this: . Since dividing any number by zero will always give us error, the slope value of such line segments is always defined as undefined.