Trig Review Lesson 3

Solving Equations

Easy Problems

If you’re given a right triangle with the lengths of each of its sides, you can pretty easily figure out what
each of the trig ratios are going to be for any angle on that triangle.

Looking at this triangle, we can pretty easily build this entire table:
1
sin 𝜃 = 2 csc 𝜃 = 2

√3 2
cos 𝜃 = 2
sec 𝜃 =
√3
1
tan 𝜃 = cot 𝜃 = √3
√3

Notice that we can figure out each trig ratio without even knowing the value of 𝜃 (it’s 30° or π/6 just by
the way). Really, if you think about it deeper, you don’t even need to know all the sides. Since we are
working with a right triangle, we can use the Pythagorean Theorem to figure out the third side.

Backwards now

So what if we were given a trig ratio and asked what the triangle it came from looks like? Say someone
24
gave you sin 𝜃 = 25 and said “What triangle was I looking at?” Well clearly they were looking at a right
triangle, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to use trig on it. But you also know that they were looking at
the opposite side and the hypotenuse, because they used sine. We know sine is opposite/hypotenuse,
so we could guess that the opposite side had a length of 24, and the hypotenuse was 25. We might be
wrong, they could have gotten a different fraction that reduced to 24/25, but we at least have a similar
triangle. Well if one leg has a length of 24, and a hypotenuse of 25, we can use the Pythagorean
theorem to find the third side. 252 – 242 = 49, which means the other leg must have a length of 7. So
here is our triangle below (which is obviously not to scale). Well now we have the same problem we had
before, and we can find every single trig ratio from here. What’s more, we know that these trig ratios
work for whatever triangle the person used, because our triangle is similar to theirs, so even if their
numbers aren’t the same, their fractions will all reduce to ours.
24 25
sin 𝜃 = 25 csc 𝜃 = 24
7 25
cos 𝜃 = sec 𝜃 =
25 7
24 7
tan 𝜃 = 7
cot 𝜃 = 24

What’s the point?

This may or may not be interesting to you, but think about what this means, all you need to know is one
trig ratio, and you can figure out every other ratio. If someone gives you the cotangent of an angle in a
triangle, you now know everything you need to know about that triangle. Even, better, if they give a
ratio and the actual length of any side, you can completely recreate the triangle.

Now let’s throw a wrench in there

Trig Review Lesson 3
Solving Equations

Okay we actually are missing something here. We actually can’t figure out the value of 𝜃. You may be
like, “If we know every trig ratio, we can easily figure out 𝜃.” But actually, even with a calculator, we
wouldn’t be able to find 𝜃. This is because all of these function are periodic. There are an infinite
number of angles we could plug into the sine function to give us a ratio of 24/25. Yeah, using inverse
24
sine on your calculator might tell you the answer is 1.287 radians, but you could also getsin 𝜃 = 25 if
the angle was 7.570 or -4.996 or even 1.855 (Plug sine of those numbers in your calculator if you don’t
believe me). This is because sine repeats itself… a lot… infinitely many times. This is why you will see
24 𝜋
problems where they say, “What is 𝜃 if sin 𝜃 = 25 and 0 < 𝜃 < 2 ?” This will mean that our answer will
be 1.287 radians, because it is the only solution between those two numbers. And actually, I lied to you:
𝜋
If 𝜃 was not between 0 and 2 , then all the other trig ratios would be wrong. To see why, let’s look at a
new problem.

New problem

Solve this equation:

3𝜋
cos =
4
How do we solve this?

To solve a problem like this, we need to use the unit circle.

3𝜋
To the right we have a unit circle with marked. We can simply
4
look at the x-coordinate of the point to find the answer to our
question. But remember, if we want to find the coordinates of this
point, we need to draw a triangle and find the sine and cosine of the
angle this line makes with the negative x-axis. In this case we would
𝜋
get an angle of and we use what we know about 45-45-90
4
triangles to find the sine and cosine of this angle. But we remember
that being on left side of the y-axis, all our x-values, and therefore our cosine values must be negative.
3𝜋 −√2
Hence, cos 4
= 2
.

But notice that the sine value is not negative! This means that we have two angles on this chart where
√2 √2
sine of that angle gives 2
. This means if we know sin(x)= 2
we have two possible answers for what x
√2 𝜋 3𝜋
could be! Just like if we know that x2 = 4, x could be 2 or -2. If sin(x)= 2
then x could be 4 or 4
. We can’t
know unless someone tells us more information.

So what about the last problem?

24
In the previous problem where sin 𝜃 = 25, we know that the sine value of the angle is positive, which
means it must be in either the first or second quadrant. The solutions I provided before are if 𝜃 is in the
first quadrant. If it is in the second quadrant, we need to draw a different triangle. We could draw this
Trig Review Lesson 3
Solving Equations

on the unit circle, but then our hypotenuse would be 1, and we

already established that it would be easier if our hypotenuse was
25, so let’s draw our angle on a circle with a radius of 25.

You’ll notice that I put the length of the third side of the triangle
on this image. The Pythagorean theorem still tells us that the
length of the adjacent side is 7. However, we are now working in
the negative x direction. So, perhaps this would make more
sense as a -7. Well knowing this, we can figure out our trig ratios
once again, this time using -7 as our adjacent side.
24 25
sin 𝜃 = 25 csc 𝜃 = 24
−7 −25
cos 𝜃 = sec 𝜃 =
25 7
−24 −7
tan 𝜃 = 7
cot 𝜃 = 24

Very similar

You’ll notice that these answers are very similar to the last answers we got, except now everything
except sine and cosecant are negative. This is generally true about angles in the second quadrant. In
fact, you could come up with a mnemonic to remember which things are positive and negative. In the
first quadrant, all trig ratios will be positive, in the second only sine and cosecant, in the third only
tangent and cotangent (because both the x and y values in the third quadrant are negative), and in the
fourth only cosine and secant (because the x-values are positive but the y-values are negative). I was
taught the phrase “All Seniors Take Calculus” to remember A: All, S: Sine, T: Tangent, and C: Cosine.
However, I don’t use that mnemonic as often as I just try to think through whether x, y, or both are
negative in which quadrant.
Trig Review Lesson 3
Solving Equations

Now, figure this problem out

4
sin 𝑥 = 5 What is tan 𝑥 = ?