I’ve always wondered what the sin, cos, and tan buttons meant on my calculator. Earlier this week I learned they mean sine, cosine, and tangent, and are used to help us find missing angles in a right triangle.
There are three sides to a right triangle – the hypotenuse (which doesn’t change depending on the angle we’re looking for), the opposite, and the adjacent (opp & adj change depending on the angle we’re looking for). The opposite is the side across from the angle, and the adjacent is the side next to the angle that isn’t the hypotenuse.
We can find angles by using these ratios:
The sine ratio = opposite/hypotenuse
The cosine ratio = adjacent/hypotenuse
The tangent ratio = opposite/adjacent
An easy way to remember these is SOH CAH TOA.