A plant is 2 inches tall. In sunlight, the plant grows 1 inch each week. At the end of the 4th week, the plant is placed in a dark room for 2 weeks and stops growing. It is then returned to the sunlight and grows at the same rate for the next 3 weeks. Describe how you would go about sketching the graph of this relationship. Include key features of the graph in your description.

Answer:

To graph this relationship, I would plot the height on the y-axis and time in weeks on the x-axis. The y-intercept is (0, 2) because the plant starts at 2 inches. From x = 0 to x = 4, the graph is a line with a slope of 1, reaching a height of 6 inches. From x = 4 to x = 6, the plant stops growing, so the graph is a horizontal line at y = 6. From x = 6 to x = 9, the plant grows again at a slope of 1, ending at a maximum height of 9 inches at point (9, 9).