Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The law of cosines generalizes the Pythagorean theorem, which holds only for right triangles: if is a right angle then =, and the law of cosines reduces to = +. The law of cosines is useful for solving a triangle when all three sides or two sides and their included angle are given.
To find an unknown angle, the law of cosines is safer than the law of sines. The reason is that the value of sine for the angle of the triangle does not uniquely determine this angle. For example, if sin β = 0.5 , the angle β can equal either 30° or 150°.
Case 1: three sides given (SSS). The cosine rule may be used to give the angles A, B, and C but, to avoid ambiguities, the half angle formulae are preferred. Case 2: two sides and an included angle given (SAS). The cosine rule gives a and then we are back to Case 1. Case 3: two sides and an opposite angle given (SSA).
If the law of cosines is used to solve for c, the necessity of inverting the cosine magnifies rounding errors when c is small. In this case, the alternative formulation of the law of haversines is preferable. [3] A variation on the law of cosines, the second spherical law of cosines, [4] (also called the cosine rule for angles [1]) states:
In spherical trigonometry, the law of cosines and derived identities such as Napier's analogies have precise duals swapping central angles measuring the sides and dihedral angles at the vertices. In the infinitesimal limit, the law of cosines for sides reduces to the planar law of cosines and two of Napier's analogies reduce to Mollweide's ...
Fig. 1a – Sine and cosine of an angle θ defined using the unit circle Indication of the sign and amount of key angles according to rotation direction. Trigonometric ratios can also be represented using the unit circle, which is the circle of radius 1 centered at the origin in the plane. [37]
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 that is 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 ...
The proofs given in this article use these definitions, and thus apply to non-negative angles not greater than a right angle. For greater and negative angles , see Trigonometric functions . Other definitions, and therefore other proofs are based on the Taylor series of sine and cosine , or on the differential equation f ″ + f = 0 ...