Q.Find the equations of the lines through the point of intersection of the lines and and whose distance from the point is .
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →We find the point of intersection of the given lines, then use the family of lines concept to represent all lines passing through this point. By applying the distance formula from a given point to this general line, we solve for to obtain the two required line equations: .
To find the equations of lines that pass through the intersection of two given lines and satisfy another condition, the most elegant and efficient approach is to use the concept of a "family of lines" or "concurrent lines".
Concept: Family of Lines
Consider two distinct lines given by the equations and .
Any line passing through the point of intersection of and can be represented by the equation , where is a real constant.
The intuition behind this is straightforward:
If a point is the intersection of and , then it satisfies both and .
Substituting these into , we get , which is always true. This means that for any value of , the point of intersection will always lie on the line represented by . This equation thus represents the entire family of lines passing through that common intersection point.
We will use this concept to set up a general equation for the lines we are looking for, and then use the given distance condition to find the specific values of .
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Find the point of intersection of the given lines.
The given lines are:
From (Eq 1), we can express in terms of : .
Substitute this into (Eq 2):
Now, substitute back into :
The point of intersection is . While we don't strictly need this point for the family of lines method, it's good to know it.
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Formulate the equation of the family of lines passing through the intersection.
Using the concept , the equation of any line passing through the intersection of and is:
Rearrange this into the standard form :
This is the general equation of the lines we are looking for. We need to find the value(s) of that satisfy the given distance condition.
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Apply the distance condition.
The distance from a point to a line is given by the formula:
In our case, the point is , and the distance .
From (Eq 3), we have , , and .
Substitute these values into the distance formula:
Let's simplify the numerator:
Now, simplify the denominator:
So, the equation becomes:
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Solve for .
To eliminate the absolute value and square root, square both sides of the equation:
Cross-multiply:
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