Accompanying Resources:
Midpoint Formula Google Drive Activity Midpoint Formula Boom Cards (digital task cards)
The midpoint of two points is the point that's exactly halfway between them. How do you find the midpoint? Let's look at an example and see if we can figure it out.
Let's say you're standing at Point A and I'm standing at Point B. If I say I'll meet you halfway, where will I meet you? There's a total of 4 spaces between us, so if we divide it exactly in half that means we each need to walk 2 spaces toward the middle. This puts the midpoint at (2,0).
Ok, so that one was maybe a little obvious as well. To make it harder, let's say you didn't have graph paper and I just gave you the coordinates. Now can you find the midpoint?
How could you have found the midpoints of the two different line segments without using a graph? Could you still figure it out? In the last example, we had the points C(0,5) and D(0,1). Since both endpoints have an x-coordinate of 0, it makes sense that the midpoint also has an x-coordinate of 0. But what about the 3? 3 is just the average of 5 and 1 (to find the average of two numbers, you add them together and divide by 2: (5 + 1)/2 = 6/2 = 3). This will work even if your two points aren't on the same horizontal or vertical line. To find the midpoint, you simply find the average of the x-coordinates and find the average of the y-coordinates. This will give you the location of the point that's exactly halfway between the two points.
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