c
  


 


The ancient Greek geometers only considered angles between 0° and 180°, and they considered neither the
straight angle of 180° nor the degenerate angle of 0° to be angles. It's not only useful to consider those special
cases to be angles, but to also include angles between 180° and 360°, too, sometimes called "reflex angles."
With the applications of trigonometry to the subjects of calculus and differential equations, angles beyond 360°
and negative angles became accepted, too.

Consider the unit circle. Denote its center (0,0) as 0 and denote the point (1,0) on it as
 As a moving point 
travels around the unit circle starting at
and moving in a counterclockwise direction, the angle
0 as a 0°
angle and increases. When  has made it all the way around the circle and back to
then angle
0 is a 360°
angle. Of course, this is the same angle as a 0° angle, so we can identify these two angles. As  continues the
second time around the circle, we get angles ranging from 360° to 720°. They're the same angles we saw the
first time around, but we have different names for them. For instance, a right angle is named as either 90° or
450°. Each time around the circle, we get another name for the angles. So 90°, 450°, 810° and 1170° all name
the same angle.

If  starts at the same point
and travels in the clockwise direction, then we'll get negative angles, or more
precisely, names in negative degrees for the same angles. For instance, if you go a quarter of a circle in the
clockwise direction, the angle
0 is named as ±90°. Of course, it's the same as a 270° angle.

So, in summary, any angle is named by infinitely many names, but they all differ by multiples of 360° from
each other.

ÿ


  


-ow that we have specified arbitrary angles, we can define their sines and cosines. Let the angle be placed so
that its vertex is at the center of the unit circle 0 = (0,0), and let the first side of the angle be placed along the -
axis. Let the second side of the angle intersect the unit circle at  Then the angle equals the angle
0 where

is (1,0). We use the coordinates of  to define the cosine of the angle and the sine of the angle. Specifically, the
-coordinate of  is the cosine of the angle, and the -coordinate of  is the sine of the angle.

This definition extends the definitions of sine and cosine given before for acute angles.

‰ 



    


There are several properties that we can easily derive from this definition. Some of them generalize identities
that we have seen already for acute angles.

1.p Sine and cosine are periodic functions of period 360°, that is, of period 2 . That's because sines and
cosines are defined in terms of angles, and you can add multiples of 360°, or 2 , and it doesn't change
the angle. Thus,

sin ( + 360°) = sin  and

cos ( + 360°) = cos 

Many of the modern applications of trigonometry follow from the uses of trig to calculus, especially
those applications which deal directly with trigonometric functions. So, we should use radian measure
when thinking of trig in terms of trig functions. In radian measure that last pair of equations read as
 sin ( + 2 ) = sin  and

cos ( + 2 ) = cos 

2.p Sine and cosine are complementary:

cos  = sin ( /2 ± )

sin  = cos ( /2 ± )

We've seen this before, but now we have it for any angle  It's true because when you reflect the plane
across the diagonal line  an angle is exchanged for its complement.

3.p The Pythagorean identity for sines and cosines follows directly from the definition. Since the point 
lies on the unit circle, its coordinates  and  satisfy the equation 2 + 2 =1. But the coordinates are the
cosine and sine, so we conclude

sin2  + cos2  = 1.

We're now ready to look at sine and cosine as functions.

4.p Sine is an odd function, and cosine is an even function. You may not have come across these adjectives
"odd" and "even" when applied to functions, but it's important to know them. A function ! is said to be
an

function if for any number  !(±) = ±!(). A function ! is said to be an  function if for any
number  !(±) = !(). Most functions are neither odd nor even functions, but it's important to notice
when a function is odd or even. Any polynomial with only odd degree terms is an odd function, for
example, !() = 5 + 83 ± 2 (-ote that all the powers of  are odd numbers.) Similarly, any polynomial
with only even degree terms is an even function. For example, !() = 4 ± 32 ± 5. (The constant 5 is 50,
and 0 is an even number.)

Sine is an odd function, and cosine is even

sin ± = ±sin  and

cos ± = cos 

These facts follow from the symmetry of the unit circle across the -axis. The angle ± is the same angle
as  except it's on the other side of the -axis. Flipping a point ( ) to the other side of the -axis makes
it into ( ), so the -coordinate is negated, that is, the sine is negated, but the -coordinate remains the
same, that is, the cosine is unchanged.

5.p An obvious property of sines and cosines is that their values lie between ±1 and 1. Every point on the
unit circle is 1 unit from the origin, so the coordinates of any point are within 1 of 0 as well.


  




Let's continue to use  as a variable angle. A good way for human beings to understand a function is to look at
its graph. Let's start with the graph of sin  Take the horizontal axis to be the -axis (rather than the -axis as
usual), take the vertical axis to be the -axis, and graph the equation  = sin  It looks like this.
First, note that it is periodic of period 2 . Geometrically, that means that if you take the curve and slide it 2
either left or right, then the curve falls back on itself. Second, note that the graph is within one unit of the -axis.
-ot much else is obvious, except where it increases and decreases. For instance, sin  grows from 0 to /2 since
the -coordinate of the point  increases as the angle
0 increases from 0 to /2.

-ext, let's look at the graph of cosine. Again, take the horizontal axis to be the -axis, but now take the vertical
axis to be the -axis, and graph the equation  = cos 

-ote that it looks just like the graph of sin  except it's translated to the left by /2. That's because of the
identity cos  = sin ( /2 + ). Although we haven't come across this identity before, it easily follows from ones
that we have seen: cos  = cos ± = sin ( /2 ± (±)) = sin ( /2 + ).


  




The graph of the tangent function has a vertical asymptote at x = /2. This is because the tangent approaches
infinity as  approaches /2. (Actually, it approaches minus infinity as  approaches /2 from the right as you
can see on the graph.

You can also see that tangent has period ; there are also vertical asymptotes every units to the left and right.
Algebraically, this periodicity is expressed by tan ( + ) = tan 

The graph for cotangent is very similar.

This similarity is simply because the cotangent of  is the tangent of the complementary angle ± 


  




The secant is the reciprocal of the cosine, and as the cosine only takes values between ±1 and 1, therefore the
secant only takes values above 1 or below ±1, as shown in the graph. Also secant has a period of 2 .

As you would expect by now, the graph of the cosecant looks much like the graph of the secant.