Calculator Trig Question

Mai-Kero

So I'm doing some homework for a trig class, and we're supposed to get the exact values of cos(60) and csc(60).

My calculator gives me 5e-1 for the cos, though. What does that even mean? Is this something I'm supposed to do by hand in radians, and if so, how?

Virum

It probably wants you to take the cos in degrees.... look at the unit circle.

Little Jim

Mai-Kero wrote: »

So I'm doing some homework for a trig class, and we're supposed to get the exact values of cos(60) and csc(60).

My calculator gives me 5e-1 for the cos, though. What does that even mean? Is this something I'm supposed to do by hand in radians, and if so, how?

5e-1 = 0.5

cos(60 degrees) = cos (pi/3) = 1/2 by this circle:

[Michael]

The proportions of the sides of a 30-60-90 triangle is something you just gotta memorize (1, 2, sqrt(3)), and to get the values of any trigonometric function you just plug in the sides.



SOH CAH TOA is a common thing to have drilled into your head in a trig class (sine=opp/hyp; cosine=adj/hyp; tangent=opp/adj), then you just gotta know that cosecant, secant, and cotangent are just sine, cosine, and tangent flipped around, and you're good to go for finding out trig function values given a triangle.

cos is adjacent over hypotenuse, so cos(60) is 1 over 2 (1/2). csc is hypotenuse over opposite, so you just plug in the side lengths for that.

Mai-Kero

Thanks people, you're awesome.

Unknown

This content has been removed.