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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.
For example, the sine of angle θ is defined as being the length of the opposite side divided by the length of the hypotenuse. The six trigonometric functions are defined for every real number , except, for some of them, for angles that differ from 0 by a multiple of the right angle (90°).
Assume that two sides b, c and the angle β are known. The equation for the angle γ can be implied from the law of sines: [5] = . We denote further D = c / b sin β (the equation's right side). There are four possible cases:
Terms with infinitely many sine factors would necessarily be equal to zero. When only finitely many of the angles are nonzero then only finitely many of the terms on the right side are nonzero because all but finitely many sine factors vanish. Furthermore, in each term all but finitely many of the cosine factors are unity.
The sine rule gives b and then we have Case 7 (rotated). There are either one or two solutions. Case 6: three angles given (AAA). The supplemental cosine rule may be used to give the sides a, b, and c but, to avoid ambiguities, the half-side formulae are preferred. Case 7: two angles and two opposite sides given (SSAA). Use Napier's analogies ...
There are two known points A, B, and two unknown points P 1, P 2. From P 1 and P 2 an observer measures the angles made by the lines of sight to each of the other three points. The problem is to find the positions of P 1 and P 2. See figure; the angles measured are (α 1, β 1, α 2, β 2).
With these functions, one can answer virtually all questions about arbitrary triangles by using the law of sines and the law of cosines. [33] These laws can be used to compute the remaining angles and sides of any triangle as soon as two sides and their included angle or two angles and a side or three sides are known.
The law of sines is useful for computing the lengths of the unknown sides in a triangle if two angles and one side are known. This is a common situation occurring in triangulation , a technique to determine unknown distances by measuring two angles and an accessible enclosed distance.