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In mathematics, sine and cosine are trigonometric functions of an angle.The sine and cosine of an acute angle are defined in the context of a right triangle: for the specified angle, its sine is the ratio of the length of the side that is opposite that angle to the length of the longest side of the triangle (the hypotenuse), and the cosine is the ratio of the length of the adjacent leg to that ...
The sine and the cosine functions, for example, are used to describe simple harmonic motion, which models many natural phenomena, such as the movement of a mass attached to a spring and, for small angles, the pendular motion of a mass hanging by a string. The sine and cosine functions are one-dimensional projections of uniform circular motion.
English: SINE and COSINE-Graph of the sine- and cosine-functions sin(x) and cos(x). One period from 0 to 2π is drawn. x- and y-axis have the same units. All labels are embedded in "Computer Modern" font. The x-scale is in appropriate units of pi.
The sine and cosine functions are fundamental to the theory of periodic functions, [63] such as those that describe sound and light waves. Fourier discovered that every continuous, periodic function could be described as an infinite sum of trigonometric functions.
Approximately equal behavior of some (trigonometric) functions for x → 0. For small angles, the trigonometric functions sine, cosine, and tangent can be calculated with reasonable accuracy by the following simple approximations:
Euler's formula states that, for any real number x, one has = + , where e is the base of the natural logarithm, i is the imaginary unit, and cos and sin are the trigonometric functions cosine and sine respectively. This complex exponential function is sometimes denoted cis x ("cosine plus i sine").
Ptolemy's theorem states that the sum of the products of the lengths of opposite sides is equal to the product of the lengths of the diagonals. When those side-lengths are expressed in terms of the sin and cos values shown in the figure above, this yields the angle sum trigonometric identity for sine: sin(α + β) = sin α cos β + cos α sin β.
A geometric way of deriving the sine or cosine of 45° is by considering an isosceles right triangle with leg length 1. Since two of the angles in an isosceles triangle are equal, if the remaining angle is 90° for a right triangle, then the two equal angles are each 45°.