Grade (slope)

Grade, or slope, refers to how steep something is. Imagine walking up a big hill - it's harder to walk up a really steep hill than it is to walk up a smaller one. The grade or slope is a number that tells you how steep the hill is.

If the grade is positive, that means you're going uphill. If it's negative, you're going downhill. The grade is usually shown as a percentage or a fraction. For example, a 10% grade means that for every 100 feet you go forward, you go up 10 feet.

It's important to know the grade of a road or a path because it can affect how hard it is to walk or drive on it. A very steep grade might be too difficult to walk or drive on safely. So engineers and builders need to know the grade of the land before they build anything on it, to make sure it will be safe and easy to use.