The Cartesian Plane

We have recently been doing work on the Cartesian plane. This can be applied to algebra, because when we plot points on the Cartesian plane, we can draw a line through these points then use algebra to create a rule that represents all of the points on this line, not just the points we plotted.

The Cartesian plane is a set of axes, the a-axis and the y-axis. The x-axis runs horisontally and the y-axis runs vertically on the page.

When we plot points on the Cartesian plane, they are written in the following form;

(x, y)

The x represents how far we move in the x-direction (or along the x-axis) and the y represents how far we move in the y-direction (or the y-axis). So a point (4, 5) means we move 4 units in the x-direction (horisontally) and 5 units in the y-direction (vertically). 

I have been very brief with my information here, however the following website is great. It has some really good information and goes into some nice detail, so I defiantly suggest you check that out. 

http://www.mathsisfun.com/data/cartesian-coordinates.html 

I have uploaded a new worksheet on this into the "Work Sheets" folder, so check this out and work through this. 

If you do have any questions on this feel free to comment on this post, or email or chat to me in person.