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Section 3.2 : Lines

8. Determine if the two lines\(y = \frac{3}{7}x + 1\) and \(3y + 7x = - 10\) are parallel, perpendicular or neither.

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To answer this question we’ll need the slope of each of the lines. The first line is in slope-intercept form and so we can easily identify the slope of that line.

\[y = \frac{3}{7}x + 1\,\,\,\hspace{0.25in}:\hspace{0.25in}{m_1} = \frac{3}{7}\]

For the second line let’s put the equation in slope-intercept form and get its slope.

\[\begin{align*}3y + 7x & = - 10\\ 3y & = - 7x - 10\\ y & = - \frac{7}{3}x - \frac{{10}}{3}\hspace{0.25in}:\hspace{0.25in}{m_2} = - \frac{7}{3}\end{align*}\] Show Step 2

The two slopes we found in the previous step are clearly not the same and so the two lines are not parallel.

On the other hand, we can see that,

\[{m_1}{m_2} = \left( {\frac{3}{7}} \right)\left( { - \frac{7}{3}} \right) = - 1\]

and so the two lines are perpendicular.