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By: Sammy Davis

Law of Sines

Explanation: The law of sines is used when solving for angles or sides of a

general triangle. That means it it a triangle without a right angle in it. If a triangle does

not have a right angle it makes the pythagorean theorem inaccurate, and therefore

unusable in that situation. However, you can still use law of sines with right triangles, it’s

just not necessarily its intended use. You can use it when you have a general triangle

and two of its sides and one angle are already identified, or when you have two

identified angles and one side. There is a catch however, one of the the sides has to be

across from the angle, or one angle has to be across from the side (depending on what

situation was relevant).

Example:
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The equation is: sin(A)/a which is also equal to sin(B)/b and sin(C)/c. The lower case

letters represent the sides of the triangle and the uppercase letters represent the

angles.

This also shows that the sides can also be

divided by the sine of the angles. It’s the same formula, just oriented for convenience

and situational circumstance. This formula applied to the example would look like this:

(sin(115)/123)=(sin(B)/16). It looks like that because if it was like this

(123/sin(115))=(16/sin(B)) then there’d be more unnecessary steps to solve it. That’s

because you need to get sin(B) on one side alone, and to do that there’d be more steps

to do it. That being said the steps to solve the equation in the more convenient

orientation are: 1-Multiple both sides by 16 (to get sin(B) on one side alone), 2- Take

the inverse sine of both sides, thus isolating B and getting the answer to the angle.

However, that’s not the end of it, there’s still another step two parts to solve for the

whole triangle. 3- add up the two angles that you have and subtract their sum from 180,

then you have your third angle. And finally 4- use the angle you just found and repeat

the process of 1 and 2 except this time use (a/sin(A))=(b/sin(B)).

Connections Within Our Class: This formula connects with the law of cosines.

This is because the law of cosines is meant to do the same thing as the law of sines

does. The difference between the would be that the law of cosines has less steps and is
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a larger equation. The equation for the law of cosines is (c^2)=(a^2)+(b^2)-2abCos(C).

As you can see there are parts to this equation that look really familiar. There’s the

pythagorean theorem, and what seems to be parts of the law of sines but mashed up in

one problem.

Connections Outside Our Class: You can use the law of sines in engineering,

in astronomy, and in navigating. You use it in engineering in the form of the sine bar (a

special tool that measures how parallel a surface is to another). You use it in astronomy

through measuring the distance between stars and planets. You use it in navigating by

measuring the distances between objects or locations.

Cites:

● http://www.mathwarehouse.com/trigonometry/law-of-sines/formula-and-practice-

problems.php

● https://brilliant.org/wiki/sine-rule/