Can someone tell my what cos, sin and tan actually measure?

Question

Can someone tell my what cos, sin and tan actually measure?

In: Mathematics

Answer 1

Sine, cosine and tangent don’t measure anything. They are math functions. You give them an angle and they give you a number back. For example, sin(90 degrees) gives you 1. The number has to do with the lengths of a right triangle. The great thing about them is, if you know the angle and the length of one of the triangle’s sides, sin, cos, and tan can tell you the length of another side. This can be very handy when building things with flat sides.