How to Use an Integral to Find the Area Between Two Lines

Integrals are used to calculate the area between a curve and an axis on the Cartesian plane (usually the x-axis). Integral notation consists of two endpoints and and an integrand. The integral of a line from a to b equals the area under the line between points a and b. The difference between two integrals corresponds to the area between the lines of the two curves being integrated. Find the area between two lines by making the integrand the difference between the equations for the two lines.

Instructions

    • 1

      Write equations for the two lines in function notation y = f(x) if they are not already so written. For example, a line that passes through the point (0, 4) and has a slope of 1 is the function y = x + 4.

    • 2

      Label the x values of the boundaries of the region whose area you wish to find "a" and "b" for the left and right boundaries, respectively.

    • 3

      Label the x-value between a and b where the two lines intersect k (skip this step if the two lines do not intersect). For example, if you are finding the area between the two lines y = x + 4 and y = -x + 6, from x = 0 to x = 10, you would label the value x = 1 as k because the two lines intersect when x = 1.

    • 4

      Identify the upper and lower boundary line in the regions a to k and k to b. For each region, make the integrand the difference of the upper and lower boundary line equations. In the above example, the integrand for the region x = 0 to x = 1 is (-x + 6) - (x + 4) and the integrand for the region x = 1 to x = 10 is (x + 4) - (-x + 6).

    • 5

      Calculate the integral for each region using the boundaries of the region as the endpoints of each integral. In the above example, there are two integrals: the integral from 0 to 1 of "(-x + 6) - (x + 4)" and the integral from 1 to 10 of "(x + 4) - (-x +6)."

    • 6

      Add the values of the integrals to find the total area between the two lines.

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