What Sin, Cos, and Tan are, your choice.

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What Sin, Cos, and Tan are, your choice.

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They’re ways of picking out components of circular motion. Imagine the second hand of a clock. It moves in a circle, but maybe you only want to know how much it’s pointing up or down, or only how much it’s pointing left or right. Sin and cos are used to calculate that from the angle of the hand (the actual angle is measured weirdly offset and backwards for a clock, because clocks weren’t used when they came up with the system). Tangent gives you both at once, by dividing the up-or-down-ness with the right-or-left-ness to give you a ratio.

These functions, and some others, are useful for translating between circular motion, measured in degrees, to motion on a grid, measured by an x and y axis. This can be used for things like drawing circles on a screen, rotating 3D objects in video games, and controlling electric vehicle motors precisely.

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