Counting Perpendicular Lines: Geometric Diagram Analysis

Question

How many pairs of perpendicular lines are shown in the diagram?

AAABBBCCCDDD

Video Solution

Solution Steps

00:00 How many perpendicular lines are in the drawing?
00:03 A perpendicular line creates a right angle at the intersection point between the lines
00:06 Let's mark and count all the right angles
00:13 The angle is greater than 90
00:20 The angle is less than 90
00:37 And this is the solution to the question

Step-by-Step Solution

Let's remember that perpendicular lines are lines that form a right angle of 90 degrees between them.

We will draw straight lines from each of the marked points in the figure to examine whether the angles are right angles.

The drawing will look like this:

AAABBBCCCDDD

Notice that from the drawing, angle BAD is greater than 90 degrees while angle CDA is less than 90 degrees.

The right angles in the drawing are:

ABC,DCB ABC,DCB

The lines that form angle ABC are: AB+BC

The lines that form angle DCB are: DC+CB

Notice that if we draw angle BAD and angle CDA, we can see that these angles are greater than 90 degrees, and therefore the lines that form them are not perpendicular.

Since there are 2 angles of 90 degrees marked in the drawing, we must have 2 pairs of perpendicular lines.

Answer

2