In this explainer, we will learn how to find the coordinates of a point that divides a line segment on the coordinate plane with a ratio using the section formula.
Let us first review some terminology.
Definition: Line Segment
A line segment is a part of a line bounded by two distinct endpoints.
We can represent the line segment between two distinct points, and , using the notation . contains all the points on the straight line between and .
To help us understand this definition, we can consider a line segment drawn on the coordinate plane with endpoints and .
The midpoint of a line segment is the middle point of the segment, the point that is equidistant between the two endpoints. We can find the coordinates of the midpoint of by halving each of the horizontal and vertical distances between and .
Recap: The Midpoint of a Line Segment
We can find the midpoint, , of a line segment between and using
We will now look at a variety of questions on dividing, or partitioning, line segments in a number of different ways.
Example 1: Dividing a Line Segment into Four Equal Parts
The coordinates of and are and respectively. Determine the coordinates of the points that divide into four equal parts.
Answer
We can begin by sketching the line segment and showing the points that divide it into 4 equal parts. We can define these points as , , and .
As is divided into four equal parts, we can approach this question by firstly finding the midpoint, , of and then finding the midpoints of and .
We recall that the midpoint, , of a line segment between coordinates and is given by
To find the midpoint, , of , we substitute the coordinates of for the values and the coordinates of for the values, giving Thus, the coordinates of are .
Next, we find the midpoint, , of . Substituting the coordinates and for the , and values, respectively, gives
Finally, we find the midpoint, , of . Using the coordinates and gives
Thus, we have found the coordinates of , , and , which divide into 4 equal parts, as
We will now look an example of how a line segment that has been partitioned by a point can be written in terms of a ratio.
Example 2: Finding the Ratio by Which a Point Divides a Line Segment
Fill in the blank: If and , then divides by the ratio .
Answer
We consider that we have a line segment . Somewhere along this line segment will be point .
Since we need to take into consideration the direction of movement from to , we use the vector .
The movement from point to point is the vector .
The magnitudes of vectors and are their lengths. We are given that ; therefore, we can write that
We can divide into 3 equal pieces.
However, we need to establish at which of these points will lie. If is closer to than , then the length of would be two-thirds the length of .
Thus, it would not be true that . Therefore, must be at the point that is closer to than .
In this way, and
To find the ratio, as is divided into 3 parts, there will be 2 parts of the total in and 1 part in .
We could write that divides in the ratio . However, we were asked how divides ; therefore, the solution is the ratio given in answer option B:
We will now investigate how we can find the coordinates of a point on a line segment that splits the line into a given ratio.
Let us begin with a line segment , with distinct points and . We then wish to find the coordinates of the point, , which splits in the ratio .
As is on , vector has the same direction as . The ratio of the magnitudes of is .
The length of can be found by the magnitude of , written as . Expressing this in terms of and , as a proportion of the length of , we have
For example, if the length of is 3 units and the length of is 2 units, we could write that
We can now find the coordinates of by considering the length of in the context of the coordinate plane. We can consider the -coordinate and -coordinate separately.
has an -coordinate of , and the horizontal displacement from to above can be rewritten in terms of the -values as .
The -coordinate of will be the -coordinate of plus the horizontal displacement from to .
We know that and ; therefore, the horizontal displacement from to is .
Thus, we can write the -coordinate of as
In order to simplify this equation, we can write as a fraction by multiplying the numerator and denominator by :
We can prepare to add these fractions, and distribute over the parentheses, giving
Simplifying, we have
Now, we have a simplified expression for the -coordinate of .
In the same way, we can write the value of the -coordinate of as
Simplifying as before, we would obtain that
This allows us to write the following formula.
Theorem: The Section Formula
If we have distinct points and and the point divides such that , then has the coordinates
We will now see how we can apply this formula in a few example questions.
Example 3: Finding the Coordinate That Divides a Line Segment Internally
If the coordinates of and are and , respectively, find the coordinates of point that divides internally by the ratio .
Answer
We can sketch this directed line segment as shown.
We can apply the following formula to find point that divides internally in the ratio . This means that and the ratio will be given as .
We can then apply the formula to partition a line segment in a given ratio.
If and and point divides such that , then has the coordinates
For our problem, has coordinates and has coordinates . We can substitute these coordinates into the formula for and respectively.
The ratio values can be substituted for and respectively.
Therefore, we will have the coordinates of as
Simplifying, we have
Thus, the coordinates of point that divides internally by the ratio are .
We will now see how we can partition a line segment externally in a given ratio.
Consider the coordinates and . Point lies on ray (not lying between points and ), such that the ratio .
Using a similar proof to that of internal partitioning, we have that is at a distance of from point .
Therefore, the -coordinate of can be found by
Similarly, the -coordinate can be written as
This allows us to write the following formula.
Theorem: The Section Formula with External Division
If we have distinct points and and point divides such that , then has the coordinates
We will now see how we can apply this formula in the following example.
Example 4: Finding the Coordinates of a Point That Divides a Line Segment Externally into a Given Ratio
If and , find in vector form the coordinates of point that divides externally in the ratio .
Answer
We can begin by sketching the points and and extending the directed line segment to point that divides externally. We can write that .
We recall the section formula for external division.
If we have distinct points and and point divides such that , then has the coordinates
We can substitute the values and for the and values, respectively, and the ratio values for and into the section formula to find the coordinates of . This gives us
As we are asked to give our answer in vector form, we can give the position vector of as
We will now see an example of how we can use the section formula to find the ratio in which a line segment is divided.
Example 5: Finding the Ratio by Which the 𝑥-Axis Divides a Line Segment
Given and , then the -axis divides by the ratio .
Answer
We can begin by plotting the coordinates and and sketching the vector .
In order to find how the -axis divides , we first need to find the point where crosses the -axis. Given the coordinates of and , we can find the equation of , beginning by finding the slope of this line.
The slope, , of a line joining two points and can be found using
Therefore, the slope between and is given by
We can then use the point–slope form of a line such that, given a point and the slope, , we can write the equation of the line as
We can substitute the coordinates of either or into this form, so using for the values and , we have
We can then multiply both sides by 7 and expand the parentheses on the right-hand side, giving
Rearranging to write this in the general form of the equation of a line, , we have
We recall that a line crosses the -axis when , so substituting this into the equation and simplifying gives
We have now calculated that the line segment crosses the -axis at the point .
We now need to find the ratio by which this coordinate, , divides .
To do this, we can use the section formula for internal division of a line segment. If we have distinct points and and point divides such that , then has the coordinates
In this question, we know points and and point that divides . We need to calculate the ratio values of and .
Substituting and for the and values, respectively, into the section formula, we have
We know that has coordinates , so we can write
Evaluating the -coordinates, we have
We can cross multiply and simplify to write an expression for in terms of as
The ratio of , so .
Thus, we can give the answer that the -axis divides in the ratio
As a check of our answer, we could find the distance of and the distance of and find the ratio of directly.
We recall that the distance formula for finding the distance, , between two points and is given by
To find the length of , , we substitute the values of and for the and values to give
To find the length of , , we substitute and for the and values, which gives
We can then write the ratio of as
Multiplying both sides of the ratio by 5, and then dividing by , gives
Thus, we have confirmed our answer, that the -axis divides by the ratio .
In the next example, we can see a more complex problem involving the partitioning of a line segment.
Example 6: Solving a Word Problem by Dividing a Line Segment
A bus is traveling from city to city . Its first stop is at , which is halfway between the cities. Its second stop is at , which is two-thirds of the way from to . What are the coordinates of and ?
Answer
We are given that city has coordinates and city has coordinates . Firstly, we need to find the coordinates of city , halfway between these.
We can make use of the formula for the midpoint of a line. To find the midpoint, , of a line segment between two points and we can use
Substituting and into this formula gives the midpoint, , as
Next, we need to find the coordinates of , which is two-thirds of the way from to . The direction, to , is important as it indicates the position of . will be closer to than . We can think of the position by dividing into 3 equal pieces. We can write the ratio as .
We can use the formula to partition a line segment in a given ratio. If and and point divides such that , then has the coordinates
In this question, we have , , and point that divides in the ratio . Substituting these into the formula to find gives
As a useful check of our answer, we can consider the lengths of and by applying the distance formula. To find the distance, , between two points and , we calculate
To calculate the length of , we can substitute the coordinates and into the formula to give
To calculate the length of , we substitute and into the distance formula, giving
Thus, we can write the ratio of lengths as
We were given that is two-thirds of the way from to . Therefore, we have confirmed that has the coordinates .
We can give the answer that the coordinates of and are
Key Points
- The midpoint, , of the line segment between and is given by
- If we have distinct points
and and point
divides
internally such that ,
then has the coordinates
- When answering problems involving the partitioning of a line segment, we need to be careful to establish the correct order of the ratio. If is split by point in the ratio , then the ratio of will be . If is split by point in the ratio , then the ratio of will instead be .
- If we have distinct points
and and point
divides externally such
that , then
has the coordinates