Slope Intercept

Question

There is currently 9 inches of snow on the ground. With the thunderstorms today the snow will melt at a rate of 1.5 inches per hour.

 

Write an equation to represent this situation.



 What do the slope and y-intercept mean?

 

 After how many hours would all of the snow be melted? Show all of your work.

 Make a table of this situation to show when all of the snow would be melted.

Answer 1

Chris, let's think about what we are dealing with here. If we start with 9 inches, after 1 hour, there will be 7.5 inches, right?

 

How would we model that? If x = the number of hours...

 

y = 9 - 1.5x

 

Of course, that's not slope-intercept form, so...

 

y = -1.5x + 9

 

What does the slope, -1.5 mean? How many inches melt each hour.

 

What does the y-intercept, 9 mean? How many inches we started with.

 

I bet you can figure out the rest.

Hope this helps!