SUBMITTED BY:

Kanishk Gupta
10th B
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
• In the course of present work it has been our
privilege to receive help and assistance from many
quarters. We take great pleasure. In
acknowledging here, our debt to them.
• This endeavor has been possible with the kind and
generous direction and encouragement given by
Mr.Adhikari. We would like to show our gratitude
to him.
• With the help of internet it has become easier to
me to collect data.
 CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. An old surveyor's tele
3. Great Trigonometric Survey
4. Indian mathematics
5. Varahamihira used the formulas
6. SOME BASIC FORMULAS
 INTRODUCTION
The basic problem of
trigonometry runs
somewhat like this:

• You stand next to a wide

river and need to know the
distance across it--say to a
tree on the other shore,
marked on the drawing
here by the letter C (for
simplicity, let's ignore the
3rd dimension).
How can this be done without actually crossing the river?

•The usual prescription is as follows. Stick two poles in

the ground at points A and B, and with a tape measure or
surveyor's chain measure the distance c between them
("the baseline").
 An old surveyor's tele
scope (theodolite)
Then remove the pole at A and replace it with a surveyor's
telescope like the one shown here ("theodolite"), having a
plate divided into 360 degrees, marking the direction
("azimuth) in which the telescope is pointing. Sighting the
telescope, first at the tree and then at pole B, you measure
the angle A of the triangle ABC, equal to the difference
between the numbers you have read from the azimuth
plate.. Replace the pole, take your scope to point B and
measure the angle B in the same way.
• The length c of the baseline, and the two angles A and B, contain
all there is to know about the triangle ABC--enough, for
instance, to construct a triangle of the same size and shape on
some convenient open field. Trigonometry (trigon = triangle) was
originally the art of deriving the missing information by pure
calculation. Given enough information to define a triangle,
trigonometry lets you calculate its remaining dimensions and
angles.

• Why triangles? Because they are the basic building blocks from
which any shape (with straight boundaries) can be constructed.
A square, pentagon or another polygon can be divided into
triangles, say by straight lines radiating from one corner to all
others.
• In mapping a country, surveyors divide it into triangles and
mark each corner by a "benchmark", which nowadays is often a
round brass plate set into the ground, with a dimple in its
center, above which the surveyors place their rods and
telescopes (George Washington did this sort of work as a
teenager). After measuring a baseline--such as AB in the
example of the river--the surveyor would measure (as
described here) the angles it formed with lines to some point
C, and use trigonometry to calculate the distances AC and BC.
These can serve as baselines for 2 more triangles, each of
which provides baselines for two more... and so on, more and
more triangles until the entire country is covered by a grid
involving only known distances. Later a secondary grid may be
added, subdividing the bigger triangles and marking its points
with iron stakes, providing additional known distances on which
any maps and plans can be based.
 "Great Trigonometric
Survey"
• The length c of the
baseline, and the two
angles A and B, contain all
there is to know about the
triangle ABC--enough, for
instance, to construct a
triangle of the same size
and shape on some
convenient open field.
Trigonometry (trigon =
triangle) was originally the
art of deriving the missing
information by pure
calculation.
Given enough information to define a triangle, trigonometry
lets you calculate its remaining dimensions and angles.

•Why triangles? Because they are the basic building blocks

from which any shape (with straight boundaries) can be
constructed. A square, pentagon or another polygon can be
divided into triangles, say by straight lines radiating from
one corner to all others.

•In mapping a country, surveyors divide it into triangles and

mark each corner by a "benchmark", which nowadays is often
a round brass plate set into the ground, with a dimple in its
center, above which the surveyors place their rods and
telescopes (George Washington did this sort of work as a
teenager).
After measuring a baseline--such as AB in the example of the river--
the surveyor would measure (as described here) the angles it formed
with lines to some point C, and use trigonometry to calculate the
distances AC abd BC. These can serve as baselines for 2 more
triangles, each of which provides baselines for two more... and so on,
more and more triangles until the entire country is covered by a grid
involving only known distances. Later a secondary grid may be added,
subdividing the bigger triangles and marking its points with iron
stakes, providing additional known distances on which any maps and
plans can be based.
 Indian mathematics
• Statue of Aryabhata.
As there is no known
information regarding
his appearance, any
image of Aryabhata
originates from an
artist's conception.

A medieval artist's rendition of Claudius Ptolemy

– The next significant developments of trigonometry were in
India. Influential works from the 4th–5th century, known
as the Siddhantas (of which there were five, the most
complete survivor of which is the Surya Siddhanta[13])
first defined the sine as the modern relationship between
half an angle and half a chord, while also defining the
cosine, versine, and inverse sine.[14] Soon afterwards,
another Indian mathematician and astronomer, Aryabhata
(476–550 AD), collected and expanded upon the
developments of the Siddhantas in an important work
called the Aryabhatiya.[15] The Siddhantas and the
Aryabhatiya contain the earliest surviving tables of sine
values and versine (1 − cosine) values, in 3.75° intervals
from 0° to 90°, to an accuracy of 4 decimal places.[16]
They used the words jya for sine, kojya for cosine,
utkrama-jya for versine, and otkram jya for inverse sine.
The words jya and kojya eventually became sine and cosine
respectively after a mistranslation described above.
 Varahamihira used the
formulas
• trigonometric equivalent to formulas known by Thales and Pythagoras

• modern sine and cosine equivalent to a chord formula known to Ptolemy;

see above
• In the 7th century, Bhaskara I produced a formula for calculating the sine
of an acute angle without the use of a table. He also gave the following
approximation formula for sin(x), which had a relative error of less than
1.9%:

• Later in the 7th century, Brahmagupta redeveloped the formula (also

derived earlier, as mentioned above) as well as the Brahmagupta
interpolation formula for computing sine values.[18] Another later Indian
author on trigonometry was Bhaskara II in the 12th century.
• Madhava (c. 1400) made early strides in the
analysis of trigonometric functions and their
infinite series expansions. He developed the
concepts of the power series and Taylor series,
and produced the power series expansions of sine,
cosine, tangent, and arctangent. Using the Taylor
series approximations of sine and cosine, he
produced a sine table to 12 decimal places of
accuracy and a cosine table to 9 decimal places of
accuracy. He also gave the power series of π and
the θ, radius, diameter, and circumference of a
circle in terms of trigonometric functions. His
works were expanded by his followers at the
Kerala School up to the 16th century.
SOME BASIC FORMULAS