Can someone tell my what cos, sin and tan actually measure?
In: Mathematics
Sure. Some things work in cycles. Says repeat, tides roll in and out, pendulums swing back and forth. These functions flatten that motion into a line we can measure.
Think about a pendulum swinging back and forth. Suppose to want to put a housing around it. You’re building and old fashioned clock and you don’t want people touching the pendulum. So how much space do you need?
You know that the pendulum hangs down say five inches. So add an inch for safety and call it six inches. But what about left and right?
Well, the pendulum only ever swings up say 30 degrees. So you need the left to right component of thirty degrees, for a five inch pendulum. That’s sine(), the left to right distance spanned by an angle. Multiply that by the five inch pendulum length and you’ve got how wide your case side should be! Add an inch for safety, measure twice, and start cutting!
Any time you see a trig function in an equation, that’s what it is. Someone is at an angle to what is important to you, and you need just the important bit.
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