Can someone tell my what cos, sin and tan actually measure?
In: Mathematics
Edit: my first animation is not good, this is much better, thanks to armaddon below
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fpouzspkfr6q61.gif
There are already so many great answers here, I only want to add:
[this animation ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Sine_and_cosine_animation.gif) will _not_ easily explain the concepts. However, if you really study it, it _can_ explain the concepts in a way that words can not.
I would _not_ recommend using this to explain the concepts to someone. It doesnt explain what sin and cos actually _are_, but once you understand what they are, this animation can help you understand how we go from “measuring right triangles” to “describing wave forms”, which is an important step in understanding one of the most common and fundamental models we use to describe the world through a lens of scientific inquiry.
That is to say, if you wanna know what’s physically true, to differentiate fact from fiction, you’ll want to understand waves, and if you want to understand waves, you’ll want to understand trig functions.
[this animation](https://www.reddit.com/r/educationalgifs/s/PykTXjj28r) is much better, but it’s also very busy and includes further concepts like secant and cotangent that you don’t need right now.
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