Meeting Point Finder

Pre-Algebra · Axiom Academy

Two cars start apart and drive toward each other. Watching where they meet is the same as solving a system of two equations — and the answer is where two lines cross. Two cars, one road — when do they meet? Car A (blue) leaves the 0-mile mark heading right at 30 mph. Car B (red) leaves the 120-mile mark heading left at 20 mph. They're closing on each other every second — so somewhere on that road, at some moment, they'll be in the exact same spot. Watch it happen first; then you'll learn to predict it without watching. Press play and follow both cars and the clock. The instant their positions match, a marker drops at the meeting spot — and the readout shows the time and place they met. They met at one exact place and one exact time. The whole point of this unit is finding that point with arithmetic instead of a stopwatch. Each car is a line — they meet where the lines cross Put each car's journey on a graph: time runs across, distance runs up. Car A's distance grows, so its line climbs; Car B's distance shrinks, so its line falls. Drag the time handle and watch both cars slide along their lines. They're at the same place only at one spot — where the two lines intersect. When the gap hits 0, both cars are at the same distance at the same time — that crossing point is the answer to the whole question. Change the speeds — watch the solution move

This is the written version of the interactive lesson above. See the full Pre-Algebra course.