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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.
Animation demonstrating how the sine function (in red) is graphed from the y-coordinate (red dot) of a point on the unit circle (in green), at an angle of θ. The cosine (in blue) is the x-coordinate. Using the unit circle definition has the advantage of drawing a graph of sine and cosine functions.
The differentiation of trigonometric functions is the mathematical process of finding the derivative of a trigonometric function, or its rate of change with respect to a variable. For example, the derivative of the sine function is written sin ′ ( a ) = cos( a ), meaning that the rate of change of sin( x ) at a particular angle x = a is given ...
Approximately equal behavior of some (trigonometric) functions for x → 0. For small angles, the trigonometric functions sine, cosine, and tangent can be calculated with reasonable accuracy by the following simple approximations:
The product of 1-D sinc functions readily provides a multivariate sinc function for the square Cartesian grid : sinc C (x, y) = sinc(x) sinc(y), whose Fourier transform is the indicator function of a square in the frequency space (i.e., the brick wall defined in 2-D space).
Scientific calculators have buttons for calculating the main trigonometric functions (sin, cos, tan, and sometimes cis and their inverses). [51] Most allow a choice of angle measurement methods: degrees, radians, and sometimes gradians. Most computer programming languages provide function libraries that include the trigonometric functions. [52]
In this case in all formulas below all arguments in θ should have sine and cosine exchanged, and as derivative also a plus and minus exchanged. All divisions by zero result in special cases of being directions along one of the main axes and are in practice most easily solved by observation.