Yahya Kemal College - Struga

Matura Project
Subject: Mathematics
Topic:

Trigonometry and trigonometric

functions

Student:

Teacher:

Ljupche Milosheski

Recai Genceli
Struga,
April, 2016

Summary:
What is trigonometry? .............................................................................
3
History of trigonometry .
4
Early trigonometry ..
4
Greek mathematics
4
Islamic trigonometry .. 6
European trigonometry . 7
Modern trigonometry . 7
Law of sines ...
8
Law of cosines ..
9
Law of tangents ....
9
Sine .. 10
Trigonometric identities . 11

What is trigonometry?

Trigonometry is a branch of mathematics that studies the

relationships between lengths and angles of triangles. The word
trigonometry was derived from the Greek word ""
("trigonometria"), meaning "triangle measuring", from "" (triangle)
plus "" (to measure).
There are 6 trigonometric functions. Those are: sine (sin), cosine
(cos), tangent (tan), cotangent (cot), secant (sec) and cosecant (csc). All
of these functions represent the relationship between certain angles and
sides of a triangle.
Trigonometry in real life is commonly used to:
1) Calculate structural load, roof slopes, ground surfaces, sun
2)
3)
4)
5)

shading, light angles, etc in architecture;

Calculate the heights of tides in oceans in oceanography;
Find the distance between celestial bodies in astronomy;
Describe the sound and lights waves in physics;
Find the height of mountains in geography;

History of trigonometry

1) Early trigonometry
The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians had known of theorems on
the ratios of the sides of similar triangles for many centuries. However,
as pre-Hellenic societies lacked the concept of an angle measure, they
were limited to studying the sides of triangles instead. Babylonians used
trigonometry in the astronomy, whereas Egyptians used primitive forms
of trigonometry for building pyramids in the 2nd millennium BC.

2) Greek mathematics
Ancient Greek and Hellenistic mathematicians made use of the
chord. Given a circle and an arc on the circle, the chord is the line that
subtends the arc. A chord's perpendicular bisector passes through the
center of the circle and bisects the angle. One half of the bisected chord
is the sine of one half the bisected angle. consequently the sine function
is also known as the half-chord. Due to this relationship, a number of
trigonometric identities and theorems that are known today were also
known to Hellenistic mathematicians, but in their equivalent chord form.
Hipparchus of Nicaea (190 125 BC) is considered to be the
father of trigonometry. He developed trigonometry and constructed

trigonometric tables, and he solved several problems of spherical

trigonometry. With trigonometry, and his solar and lunar, he may have
been the first to develop a reliable method to predict solar eclipces.
Menelaus of Alexandria (70 140 CE) wrote in three books
his Sphaerica. In Book I, he established a basis for spherical triangles
analogous to the Euclidean basis for plane triangles. He establishes a
theorem that is without Euclidean analogue, that two spherical triangles
are congruent if corresponding angles are equal, but he did not
distinguish between congruent and symmetric spherical triangles.
Another theorem that he establishes is that the sum of the angles of a
spherical triangle is greater than 180. Book II of Sphaerica applies
spherical geometry to astronomy. And Book III contains the "theorem of
Menelaus".
Later, Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 90 ca. 168 AD) expanded upon
Hipparchus' Chords in a Circle in his Almagest, or the Mathematical
Syntaxis. The Almagest is primarily a work on astronomy, and astronomy
relies on trigonometry. Ptolemys table of chords gives the lengths of
chords of a circle of diameter 120 as a function of the number of
degrees n in the corresponding arc of the circle, for n ranging from 1/2 to
180 by increments of 1/2. A theorem that was central to Ptolemy's
calculation of chords was what is still known today as Ptolemys
theorem, that the sum of the products of the opposite sides of a cyclic
quadrilateral is equal to the product of the diagonals. A special case of
Ptolemy's theorem appeared as proposition 93 in Euclid's Data.
Ptolemy's theorem leads to the equivalent of the four sum-and-difference
formulas for sine and cosine that are today known as Ptolemy's
formulas, although Ptolemy himself used chords instead of sine and

cosine. Ptolemy further derived the equivalent of the half-angle formula:

1cos
sin 2 ( )=
2
2

3) Islamic mathematics
In

the

early

9th

century

AD, Muhammad

ibn

Ms

al-

Khwrizm produced accurate sine and cosine tables, and the first table
of tangents. He was also a pioneer in spherical trigonometry. In 830
AD, Habash

al-Hasib

al-Marwazi

produced

the

first

table

of

cotangents. Muhammad ibn Jbir al-Harrn al-Battn (Albatenius)

(853-929 AD) discovered the reciprocal functions of secant and
cosecant, and produced the first table of cosecants for each degree from
1 to 90.
By the 10th century AD, in the work of Ab al-Waf' al-Bzjn,
Muslim mathematicians were using all six trigonometric functions. Abu
al-Wafa had sine tables in 0.25 increments, to 8 decimal places of
accuracy, and accurate tables of tangent values. He also developed the
following trigonometric formula: sin 2 =2sin cos .
He also established the angle addition and difference identities,
and discovered the law of sines: sin( )=sin cos cos sin .
Also in the late 10th and early 11th centuries AD, the Egyptian
astronomer Ibn Yunus performed many careful trigonometric calculations
6

and

demonstrated

cos cos =

the

cos( + )+ cos( )
2

following trigonometric

identity:

4) European Mathematics
Levi ben Gershon, in 1342, wrote a book where he proved the sine
law and gave the five-figure sine table.
Regiomontanus was perhaps the first mathematician in Europe to
treat trigonometry as a distinct mathematical discipline.
In the 17th century, Isaac Newton and James Stirling developed
the general NewtonStirling interpolation formula for trigonometric
functions.
In the 18th century, Leonhard Euler was mostly responsible for
establishing the analytic treatment of trigonometric functions in Europe.
He used the near-modern abbreviations such as sin, cos, tang, cot, sec
and cosec.

5) Modern trigonometry

If one angle of a triangle is 90 degrees and one of the other angles

is known, the third is thereby fixed, because the three angles of any
triangle add up to 180 degrees. The two acute angles therefore add up
to 90 degrees: they are complementary angles. The shape of a triangle
is completely determined, except for similarity, by the angles. Once the
angles are known, the ratios of the sides are determined, regardless of
the overall size of the triangle. If the length of one of the sides is known,
the other two are determined. The hypotenuse is the side opposite to the
90 degree angle in a right triangle; it is the longest side of the triangle
and one of the two sides adjacent to angle A. The adjacent leg is the
other side that is adjacent to angle A. The opposite side is the side that
is opposite to angle A. So, the trigonometric functions for right triangle
are:
a
opposite
1) Sine :sin A= c = hypotenuse
b
adjacent
2) Cosine: cos A= c = hypotenuse

3) Tangent:

a opposite
tan A= =
b adjacent

b adjacent
4) Cotangent: cot A= a = opposite
c hypotenuse
5) Secant: sec A= b = adjacent

6) Cosecant:

c hypotenuse
csc A= =
a
opposite

Law of sines

The law of sines for an arbitrary triangle states:

a
b
c
=
=
=2 R
sin A sin B sinC

Another law involving sines can be used to calculate the area of a

triangle. Given two sides a and b and the angle between the sides C, the
area of the triangle is given by half the product of the lengths of two
1
sides and the sine of the angle between the two sides: P= 2 ab sin C .

Law of cosines
The law of cosines is an extension of the Pythagorean Theorem to
2
2
2
arbitrary triangles: c =a + b 2 ab cos C .

In another form, it can also be expressed as:

cos C=

a2 +b2 c 2
2ab

The law of cosines is useful for computing the third side of a

triangle when two sides and their enclosed angle are known, and in
computing the angles of a triangle if all three sides are known.

Law of tangents
The law of tangents is a statement about the relationship between
the tangents of two angles of a triangle and the lengths of the opposing
sides. It states that:
(AB)
ab
2
=
a+b
( A+ B)
tan
2
tan

The law of tangents can be used to compute the missing side and
angles of a triangle in which two sides and the angle between them are
given.

Sine

Sine is a trigonometric function of an angle. The sine of an angle is

defined in the context of a right triangle: for the specified angle, it is the
ratio of the length of the side that is opposite that angle (that is not the
hypotenuse) to the length of the longest side of the triangle (i.e., the
hypotenuse).
Trigonometric functions are commonly defined as ratios of two
sides of a right triangle containing the angle, and can equivalently be
defined as the lengths of various line segments from a unit circle. More
10

modern definitions express them as infinite series or as solutions of

certain differential equations, allowing their extension to arbitrary positive
and negative values and even to complex numbers.
The sine function is commonly used to model periodic phenomena
such as sound and light waves, the position and velocity of harmonic
oscillators, sunlight intensity and day length, and average temperature
variations throughout the year.

Trigonometric identities

1) Angle addition formulas

sin( )=sin cos sin cos
cos( )=cos cos sin sin

11

tan ( )=

tan tan
1 tan tan

cot( )=

cot cot 1
cot cot

2) Addition formulas

sin + sin =2sin

+

cos
2
2

sin sin =2 sin

+
cos
2
2

cos +cos =2 cos

+

cos
2
2

cos cos =2 sin

+

sin
2
2

3) Product formulas

()
cos ( + )cos
1
sin sin =
2
1
sin cos = (sin( + )+ sin( ))
2

12

1
cos sin = (sin( + )sin( ))
2
1
cos cos = (cos ( + )+cos ( ))
2

4) Double angle formulas

sin 2 =2sin cos
2

cos 2 =cos sin =2 cos 1=12sin

tan 2 =

2 tan
1tan 2

5) Half angle formulas

1cos
sin =
2
2

1+cos
cos =
2
2
1cos
sin
tan =
=
2
sin
1+cos

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigonometry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_trigonometry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TrigonometricAdditionFormulas.html

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