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Uses of trigonometry
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Jump to: navigation, search Trigonometry has an enormous variety of applications. The ones mentioned explicitly in textbooks and courses on trigonometry are its uses in practical endeavors such as navigation, land surveying, building, and the like. It is also used extensively in a number of academic fields, primarily mathematics, science and engineering. Among the lay public of non-mathematicians and non-scientists, trigonometry is known chiefly for its application to measurement problems, yet is also often used in ways that are far more subtle, such as its place in the theory of music; still other uses are more technical, such as in number theory. The mathematical topics of Fourier series and Fourier transforms rely heavily on knowledge of trigonometric functions and find application in a number of areas, including statistics.
Contents
1 Some fields to which trigonometry is applied 2 How these fields interact with trigonometry 3 Fourier series 4 Fourier transforms 5 Statistics, including mathematical psychology 6 A simple experiment with polarized sunglasses 7 Number theory 8 Sources
particular in analysis of financial markets), electrical engineering, electronics, land surveying and geodesy, many physical sciences, mechanical engineering, machining, medical imaging (CAT scans and ultrasound), meteorology, music theory, number theory (and hence cryptography), oceanography, optics, pharmacology, phonetics, probability theory, psychology, seismology, statistics, and visual perception.
Fourier series
Many fields make use of trigonometry in more advanced ways than can be discussed in a single article. Often those involve what are called Fourier series, after the 18th- and 19th-century French mathematician and physicist Joseph Fourier. Fourier series have a surprisingly diverse array of applications in many scientific fields, in particular in all of the phenomena involving seasonal periodicities mentioned above, and in wave motion, and hence in the study of radiation, of acoustics, of seismology, of modulation of radio waves in electronics, and of electric power engineering. A Fourier series is a sum of this form:
where each of the squares ( ) is a different number, and one is adding infinitely many terms. Fourier used these for studying heat flow and diffusion (diffusion is the process whereby, when you drop a sugar cube into a gallon of water, the sugar gradually spreads through the water, or a pollutant spreads through the air, or any dissolved substance spreads through any fluid). Fourier series are also applicable to subjects whose connection with wave motion is far from obvious. One ubiquitous example is digital compression whereby images, audio and video data are compressed into a much smaller size which makes their transmission feasible over telephone, internet and broadcast networks. Another example, mentioned above, is diffusion. Among others
are: the geometry of numbers, isoperimetric problems, recurrence of random walks, quadratic reciprocity, the central limit theorem, Heisenberg's inequality.
Fourier transforms
A more abstract concept than Fourier series is the idea of Fourier transform. Fourier transforms involve integrals rather than sums, and are used in a similarly diverse array of scientific fields. Many natural laws are expressed by relating rates of change of quantities to the quantities themselves. For example: The rate of change of population is sometimes jointly proportional to (1) the present population and (2) the amount by which the present population falls short of the carrying capacity. This kind of relationship is called a differential equation. If, given this information, we try to express population as a function of time, we are trying to "solve" the differential equation. Fourier transforms may be used to convert some differential equations to algebraic equations for which methods of solving them are known. Fourier transforms have many uses. In almost any scientific context in which the words spectrum, harmonic, or resonance are encountered, Fourier transforms or Fourier series are nearby.
Number theory
There is a hint of a connection between trigonometry and number theory. Loosely speaking, one could say that number theory deals with qualitative properties rather than quantitative properties of numbers. A central concept in number theory is "divisibility" (example: 42 is divisible by 14 but not by 15). The idea of putting a fraction in lowest terms also uses the concept of divisibility: e.g., 15/42 is not in lowest terms because 15 and 42 are both divisible by 3. Look at the sequence of fractions
Discard the ones that are not in lowest terms; keep only those that are in lowest terms:
The value of the sum is 1. How do we know that? Because 42 has an odd number of prime factors and none of them are repeated: 42 = 2 3 7. (If there had been an even number of nonrepeated factors then the sum would have been 1; if there had been any repeated prime factors (e.g., 60 = 2 2 3 5) then the sum would have been 0; the sum is the Mbius function evaluated at 42.) This hints at the possibility of applying Fourier analysis to number theory.
Sources
Uses of trigonometry. In State Master [Web]. Retrieved June 23, 2009, from http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Uses-of-trigonometry