What is the slope of the line perpendicular to $y=1/3x-23$ ?

Question

2358 views around the world

You can reuse this answer
Creative Commons License

Answer 1 · 2018-03-08T18:31:47

Using some basic geometry, you can find that the slope would be -3

If you treat the slope of the equation as a change in y over change in x, you can treat it like a triangle with sides of 1,3, and $sqrt(10)$ .

The angle that the line makes with a horizontal is $tan^-1(1/3)$ , which is 18.435 degrees.

Adding 90 degrees to this gives you a perpendicular angle, 108.435.

Take the tangent of 108.435 and you get -3

What is the slope of the line perpendicular to y=1/3x-23 y=1/3x-23 ?