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In mathematics, sine and cosine are trigonometric functions of an angle.The sine and cosine of an acute angle are defined in the context of a right triangle: for the specified angle, its sine is the ratio of the length of the side opposite that angle to the length of the longest side of the triangle (the hypotenuse), and the cosine is the ratio of the length of the adjacent leg to that of the ...
Fig. 1 – A triangle. The angles α (or A), β (or B), and γ (or C) are respectively opposite the sides a, b, and c.. In trigonometry, the law of cosines (also known as the cosine formula or cosine rule) relates the lengths of the sides of a triangle to the cosine of one of its angles.
A geometric way of deriving the sine or cosine of 45° is by considering an isosceles right triangle with leg length 1. Since two of the angles in an isosceles triangle are equal, if the remaining angle is 90° for a right triangle, then the two equal angles are each 45°.
The sine and the cosine functions, for example, are used to describe simple harmonic motion, which models many natural phenomena, such as the movement of a mass attached to a spring and, for small angles, the pendular motion of a mass hanging by a string. The sine and cosine functions are one-dimensional projections of uniform circular motion.
A formula for computing the trigonometric identities for the one-third angle exists, but it requires finding the zeroes of the cubic equation 4x 3 − 3x + d = 0, where is the value of the cosine function at the one-third angle and d is the known value of the cosine function at the full angle.
The cosine, cotangent, and cosecant are so named because they are respectively the sine, tangent, and secant of the complementary angle abbreviated to "co-". [ 32 ] With these functions, one can answer virtually all questions about arbitrary triangles by using the law of sines and the law of cosines . [ 33 ]
which by the Pythagorean theorem is equal to 1. This definition is valid for all angles, due to the definition of defining x = cos θ and y sin θ for the unit circle and thus x = c cos θ and y = c sin θ for a circle of radius c and reflecting our triangle in the y-axis and setting a = x and b = y.
More generally, direction cosine refers to the cosine of the angle between any two vectors. They are useful for forming direction cosine matrices that express one set of orthonormal basis vectors in terms of another set, or for expressing a known vector in a different basis.