Finding the Interception Points of a Line
Calculating Coordinates of x-Intercepts
Suppose that we have a line and we want to find the coordinates of the $x$-intercepts. Recall that coordinates of an $x$-intercept always have their $y$-coordinate at 0. Imagine you're in the air. We could analogously imagine a solution to occur if you touch the ground. You'll only touch the ground when your height from the ground is at 0 though. The same concept holds for x-intercepts.
If we take an equation in the form $y = mx + b$ or $ax + by + c = 0$ and set $y$ as 0 and solve for $x$, we will find the $x$-coordinate that corresponding to the $y$-coordinate of 0, or more appropriately, we will have the coordinates of our $x$-intercept.
For example, let's look at the line $y = 2x + 4$. If we set $y$ to be 0, then all we have to do is solve for a 1-variable linear equation:
(1)Therefore, we have an $x$-intercept at the coordinates $(-2, 0)$.
We can apply this same rule to lines in general form. For example, consider the line $x -3y + 7 = 0$. Once again, we will set $y$ to be 0, and thus:
(2)Therefore we have an $x$-intercept at $(-7, 0)$.
We should note that finding $x$-intercepts in general form is easy. Suppose that $ax + by + c$ is any line, and set $y$ to be 0:
(3)Therefore, we note that a line in general form has an $x$-intercept at $(\frac{-c}{a}, 0)$.
Calculating Coordinates of y-intercepts
If we have a line in slope-intercept form $y = mx + b$, we can easily obtain the $y$-intercept from the line to have the coordinates $(0, b)$. For example, the line $y = x + 4$ has a $y$-intercept at $(0, 4)$.
If we have a line in general form, we could always convert it to slope-intercept form to obtain the coordinates of the $y$-intercept. However, recall that $y$-intercepts always have their $x$-coordinate as 0, so similarly to how we found $x$-intercepts, we can always set $x$ to be 0 and solve for $y$.
For example, take the equation $2x + 3y + 4 = 0$ and set $x$ to be 0, then solve the 1-variable linear equation:
(4)Therefore our line has a $y$-intercept at $(0, \frac{-4}{3})$. If we had converted this line to slope-intercept form, we would have seen the same results.
In general, we note that if we have a line in $ax + by + c$ form and set $x$ to be 0:
(5)We thus have that our $y$-intercept has coordinates $(0, \frac{-c}{b})$.
It is important to note the similarity and differences between calculating coordinates for x-intercepts and y-intercepts.
Example Questions
- 1. Calculate the coordinates of the x-intercepts and y-intercepts for the line $y = 5x - 3$.
- 2. Calculate the coordinates of the x-intercepts and y-intercepts for the line $y = 4$.
- 3. Calculate the coordinates of the x-intercepts and y-intercepts for the line $x = -3$.
- 4. Calculate the coordinates of the x-intercepts and y-intercepts for the line $2x - 3y + 7 = 0$.