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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 ...
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.
Ptolemy's theorem states that the sum of the products of the lengths of opposite sides is equal to the product of the lengths of the diagonals. When those side-lengths are expressed in terms of the sin and cos values shown in the figure above, this yields the angle sum trigonometric identity for sine: sin(α + β) = sin α cos β + cos α sin β.
The sine and tangent small-angle approximations are used in relation to the double-slit experiment or a diffraction grating to develop simplified equations like the following, where y is the distance of a fringe from the center of maximum light intensity, m is the order of the fringe, D is the distance between the slits and projection screen ...
The local maxima and minima of the unnormalized sinc correspond to its intersections with the cosine function. That is, sin(ξ) / ξ = cos(ξ) for all points ξ where the derivative of sin(x) / x is zero and thus a local extremum is reached.
On the other hand, the versed sine of θ is the distance CD from the center of the chord to the center of the arc. Thus, the sum of cos(θ) (equal to the length of line OC) and versin(θ) (equal to the length of line CD) is the radius OD (with length 1). Illustrated this way, the sine is vertical (rectus, literally "straight") while the versine ...
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). The sine rule gives C and then we have Case 7. There are ...
Similar to the sine and cosine functions, the inverse trigonometric functions can also be calculated using power series, as follows. For arcsine, the series can be derived by expanding its derivative, 1 1 − z 2 {\textstyle {\tfrac {1}{\sqrt {1-z^{2}}}}} , as a binomial series , and integrating term by term (using the integral definition as ...