Tangental Line

Level pending

Two values of m will make the line y = mx + b tangent to the parabola y = x² + 9 . Find the sum of the two numbers.


The answer is 0.

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1 solution

Shreyas Vidyarthi
Jan 22, 2014

y = mx + b is the (or are the) tangential lines keeping b as a constant Y-intercept. Since the slope can be defined as the tan of angle between the line and the X axis, we have the following for the 2 slopes.

m1 + m2 = tan(x) + tan(180 - x) = m + (- m) = 0

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