Trigonometry

Functions for finding numbers of angles, sides of triangles, and positions on a circle. These functions are also used to make information for wave signals.

What’s your angle? Degrees or radians

A compass shows where North is and the direction to it is 0 degrees (which is also 360 degrees). If you walk directly to the East, then your direction will be 90 degrees on the compass. This is also the measurement of the angle between the path of your direction and the path to North. If point yourself to North and spin around to the right (clockwise) in one spot, you will see the compass change from 0 degrees, go up to 359 degrees, and back to 0 degrees. So, a full rotation is 360 degrees, or full circle.

Another way to measure angles is to use numbers that are special to the size of circles. A circle has two important numbers related to it. They are called the radius and _pi_. The radius is the distance from the center of the circle to its outside edge. A long time ago, people learned that no matter how big a circle is, if you divide the length of its outside edge by the length of its radius, you always get the same number back. They decided to call this number _pi_. It’s 2 times _pi_ actually, because they used the whole length across the circle which is two lengths of the radius.

Now, we don’t have to worry about the radius anymore, we can just use some part of 2_pi_ to tell where any spot on the edge of a circle is. Any part or all of 2_pi_ is called radians. We can use radians to measure an angle of direction too, just like with the compass. Except now, we spin 2_pi_ radians around the circle instead of 360 degrees.

In code, you use radians for angle measures. All of the math functions for trigonometry use radians.

Sine

Get the length of the vertical (up or down) side of a right triangle at some angle. But, the sine value is the length of the vertical side divided by the length of the longest side, its hypotenuse.

What’s the sine of 60 degrees? Math.sin(60 * Math.PI / 180) equals 0.5. The vertical side of a right triangle is one half the length of the longest side when the opposite angle is 60 degrees.

let ySide = Math.sin(60 * Math.PI / 180)

Cosine

Get the length of the horizontal (left or right) side of a right triangle at some angle. But, the cosine value is the length of the horizontal side divided by the length of the longest side, its hypotenuse.

What’s the cosine of 45 degrees? Math.cos(45 * Math.PI / 180) equals 0.707. The length of the horizontal side of a right triangle is about 70 percent of the length of the longest side when the angle between them is 45 degrees.

let xSide = Math.cos(45 * Math.PI / 180)

Tangent

The tangent of an angle is its sine divided by the cosine. To find the tangent of the angle of 30 degrees:

let tangent = Math.tan(30 * Math.PI / 180)

This is the same value as:

let tangent = Math.sin(30 * Math.PI / 180) / Math.sin(30 * Math.PI / 180)

Arc functions

The arc functions work opposite to the way the other trigonometric functions due. Instead of returning a length value for a side from an angle, the arc functions give you an angle value from the length of a side of a right triangle.

asin

To get the an angle for the right triangle using the length of the vertical side, use the Math.asin() function. A value of 30 degrees is returned for a length of 0.5 of the vertical side.

let arcSine = Math.asin(0.5)* 180 / Math.PI

acos

To get the an angle for the right triangle using the length of the horizontal side, use the Math.acos() function. A value of 60 degrees is returned for a length of 0.5 of the horizontal side.

let arcCosine = Math.acos(0.5)* 180 / Math.PI

atan

The arc tangent returns an angle for the value of the vertical side divided by the value of the horizontal side. We know that a triangle with equal vertical and horizontal sides has an angle of 45 degrees. So, if we set the x and y sides of the triangle to the same value, Math.atan() should give us a radian value that translates to 45 degrees.

let x = 1
let y = 1
let arcTangent = Math.atan(y / x) * 180 / Math.PI

atan2

The Math.atan2() is very similar to Math.atan() except that the values for the vertical and horizontal sides are given separately instead of being already divided. For equal sides, the radian value that translates to 45 degrees results from using the same x and y values.

let x = 1
let y = 1
let arcTangent2 = Math.atan2(y, x) * 180 / Math.PI