Posted: 6/9/2013 4:37:21 PM EDT
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What are some practical, real world applications of graphing sine, cosine, tangent, and their inverses, other than simply the relations of sides of the triangle etc?
Or is this (graphing tan, sin, cos etc) simply a building block used everyday by engineers or....? |
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Quoted:
Periodic phenomena like sound waves, radio waves, vibrating masses on springs, etc can all be graphically shown as the trig functions sine or cosine. So yeah, knowing the graphs of trig functions is useful. Yep. Knowing how a cosine wave looks helps to know if the cop got you while speeding down the road. I have seen the secant function used to limit the scope of travel of motorized equipment. If you work in electricity at all the sine function is handy to know. There are many more, but I have seen them pop up all over the place. |
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Zwitter - this is what I was looking for, thank you. So engineers DO use this quite a bit; Mech. Engineering curriculums have a class called vibrations; all makes sense now.
It helps when I learn something to think of a practical use for the equation etc.. to understand it. Much appreciated |
in physical chemistry incorporate sin and cos functions. Most everyday occupations won't have much use for trig or any other advanced mathematics, but it does apply to everyday life. Even on the smallest scale.