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In trigonometry, the law of sines, sine law, sine formula, or sine rule is an equation relating the lengths of the sides of any triangle to the sines of its angles. According to the law, = = =, where a, b, and c are the lengths of the sides of a triangle, and α, β, and γ are the opposite angles (see figure 2), while R is the radius of the triangle's circumcircle.
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.
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 ...
This equation can have 2, 1, or 0 positive solutions corresponding to the number of possible triangles given the data. It will have two positive solutions if b sin γ < c < b, only one positive solution if c = b sin γ, and no solution if c < b sin γ. These different cases are also explained by the side-side-angle congruence ambiguity.
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]
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°.
This geometric argument relies on definitions of arc length and area, which act as assumptions, so it is rather a condition imposed in construction of trigonometric functions than a provable property. [2] For the sine function, we can handle other values. If θ > π /2, then θ > 1. But sin θ ≤ 1 (because of the Pythagorean identity), so sin ...
There are a number of ways to demonstrate the validity of the small-angle approximations. The most direct method is to truncate the Maclaurin series for each of the trigonometric functions. Depending on the order of the approximation , cos θ {\displaystyle \textstyle \cos \theta } is approximated as either 1 {\displaystyle 1} or as 1 − 1 ...