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The trigonometric functions cosine and sine of angle θ may be defined on the unit circle as follows: If (x, y) is a point on the unit circle, and if the ray from the origin (0, 0) to (x, y) makes an angle θ from the positive x-axis, (where counterclockwise turning is positive), then = =.
The fact that the triple-angle formula for sine and cosine only involves powers of a single function allows one to relate the geometric problem of a compass and straightedge construction of angle trisection to the algebraic problem of solving a cubic equation, which allows one to prove that trisection is in general impossible using the given tools.
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]
A geometric way of deriving the sine or cosine of 45° is by considering an isosceles right triangle with leg length 1. Since two of the angles in an isosceles triangle are equal, if the remaining angle is 90° for a right triangle, then the two equal angles are each 45°.
To extend the sine and cosine functions to functions whose domain is the whole real line, geometrical definitions using the standard unit circle (i.e., a circle with radius 1 unit) are often used; then the domain of the other functions is the real line with some isolated points removed.
The definitions of sine and cosine have been extended to any real value in terms of the lengths of certain line segments in a unit circle. More modern definitions express the sine and cosine as infinite series , or as the solutions of certain differential equations , allowing their extension to arbitrary positive and negative values and even to ...
Illustration of the sine and tangent inequalities. The figure at the right shows a sector of a circle with radius 1. The sector is θ/(2 π) of the whole circle, so its area is θ/2. We assume here that θ < π /2. = = = =
For example, the cosine and sine of 2π ⋅ 5/37 are the real and imaginary parts, respectively, of the 5th power of the 37th root of unity cos(2π/37) + sin(2π/37)i, which is a root of the degree-37 polynomial x 37 − 1.