Law of tangents

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Figure 1 A triangle. The angles ,, and are respectively opposite the sides a, b, and c.

In trigonometry, the law of tangents[1] is a statement about the relationship between the tangents of two angles of a triangle and the lengths of the opposite sides. In Figure 1, a, b, and c are the lengths of the three sides of the triangle, and , , and are the angles opposite those three respective sides. The law oftangents states that

The law of tangents, although not as commonly known as the law of sines or the law of cosines, is equivalent to the law of sines, and can be used in any case where two sides and the included angle, or two angles and a side, are known. The law of tangents for spherical triangles was described in the 13th century by Persian mathematician Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (120174), who also presented the law of sines for plane triangles in his five-volume work Treatise on the Quadrilateral.[2][3]
Contents
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1 Proof 2 Application 3 See also 4 Notes

[edit]Proof

To prove the law of tangents we can start with the law of sines:

Let

so that

It follows that

Using the trigonometric identity, the factor formula for sines specifically

we get

As an alternative to using the identity for the sum or difference of two sines, one may cite the trigonometric identity

(see tangent half-angle formula).

[edit]Application

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

one can compute with side

; together this yields and ; the remaining

can then be computed using the Law of sines. In the time

before electronic calculators were available, this method was preferable to an application of the Law of cosines , as this latter law

necessitated an additional lookups in a logarithm table, in order to compute the square root. In modern times the law of tangents may have better numerical properties than the law of cosines: If and and is small,

are almost equal, then an application of the law of

cosines leads to a subtraction of almost equal values, which implies a loss of significant digits.edit