Illustrated · 2 min
Quadratics
A quadratic equation is an equation of the following form: where represents an unknown variable, , , and are constants, and . The left side has all of the fancy numbers and variables, while the right side is .

Image source: By Caroline Kulczycky
Because the term is raised to the second degree, it is called the quadratic term. The term is the linear term because it has a degree of . The term is the constant term because it has a degree of . Quadratic equations can be rearranged to be equal to . Zeros or roots of a quadratic are known as the solutions to quadratic equations.
, , and don't have to be integers, so you can have a decimal as a constant! Therefore, it may initially seem like you need a perfect square, but you actually don't.
Quadratics can be solved by factorization, completing the square, or using the quadratic formula. To figure out how many solutions a quadratic has, you use the discriminant! You can also find complex solutions with double roots, but that's a little advanced for this lesson!
Now, let's look at some graphs of quadratic functions. Quadratics make a parabola on the graph, which makes a U shape.
Graphed below in red is . We can see that the graph follows the pattern of a traditional quadratic equation, but its minimum point is not on the origin, but units below the origin.

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Graphed below in red is . Here, we can see that the graph has both been shifted down and also shifted to the right, compared to the original quadratic equation graph.

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Graphed below in purple is . Just like the first two graphs, this purple graph has also been shifted from the original quadratic function graph! Here, the graph is shifted units to the lift and unit down.

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Graphed below in black is . Don't get frightened by this graph! The graph has been flipped because of the negative sign. The graph has also been shifted units to the right and units up.

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Finally, graphed below in green is . This is the most basic quadratic function. The minimum point is always on the origin, .

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Looking Further
We will use the concept of substitution later in harder math. So it's best to master it now! Substitution often leads to a quadratic equation when solving systems of nonlinear equations.

