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It is even possible to obtain a result slightly greater than one for the cosine of an angle. The third formula shown is the result of solving for a in the quadratic equation a 2 − 2ab cos γ + b 2 − c 2 = 0. This equation can have 2, 1, or 0 positive solutions corresponding to the number of possible triangles given the data.
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 ...
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.
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]
The trigonometric functions of angles that are multiples of 15°, 18°, or 22.5° have simple algebraic values. These values are listed in the following table for angles from 0° to 45°. [ 1 ] In the table below, the label "Undefined" represents a ratio 1 : 0. {\displaystyle 1:0.}
For a small angle, H and A are almost the same length, and therefore cos θ is nearly 1. The segment d (in red to the right) is the difference between the lengths of the hypotenuse, H, and the adjacent side, A, and has length , which for small angles is approximately equal to /.
The fact that the triple-angle formula for sine and cosine only involves powers of a single function allows one to relate the geometric problem of a compass and straightedge construction of angle trisection to the algebraic problem of solving a cubic equation, which allows one to prove that trisection is in general impossible using the given tools.
Euler's formula states that, for any real number x, one has = + , where e is the base of the natural logarithm, i is the imaginary unit, and cos and sin are the trigonometric functions cosine and sine respectively. This complex exponential function is sometimes denoted cis x ("cosine plus i sine").