Question 11165: It's been about 2 years since I have done any math and now I'm taking college algebra but I have forgotten how to do some of the stuff. The main problem I can't figure out at the moment is: a line is vertical and passes through the point (5,2). I know that the line crosses the x-axis on the 5 but I can't figure out the slope or how to put it in the form of y=mx+b.
Answer by Earlsdon(6294)   (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website! Well, first of all, a vertical line has an undefined slope. Remember that slope is defined as "rise over run". A vertical line has "rise" but "zero run", so the slope becomes rise over zero and, in math, anything over zero is undefined. As you pointed out though, the line has an x-intercept (x = 5) but no y-intercept.
A horizontal line,on the other hand, has a zero slope.
So you really can't write the equation of a vertical line in the slope-intercept form because a vertical line passes through all values of y, so y is not a component of the equation.
The equation of the vertical line in your problem is just: x = 5
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