Thread: How to Learn Trigonometry

I grew up in a country area. If I remember correctly the question that was the introduction to trig was along the lines of, I want to cut down that tree. How tall is it and therefore will it hit that fence that is x meters away? With a very basic inclinometer (think wood protractor with pendulum) we could get a rough eye ball of the of the angle to the top and a tape measure of how far away we were. A quick calculation and we had our answer.

It was also the same as when we did formulas with gravity and acceleration. We plotted the path a bullet would take to work out how far above the target to aim. In graphics we took two compass readings of an object that was about 300 metres away from two points that were 50 metres apart. We used trig to work out how far the target was away.

I am not sure if that would work in today's classroom but it worked for me.

Talking abut using acronyms to remember stuff, one of the most memorable chemistry ones was, "Small poles don't fill great holes", to remember the SPDFGH electron orbitals.

RE: Trigonometry - I learned trig in a small country convent school, While the other students in 10th grade were practicing general maths, myself and two other female students were in a group that was taught trig which would enable us to take maths at senior high school. We turned out to be the first students to learn trig a that school. It did not take us long to work out that the elderly nun (probably in her late 50's) who taught us (she also taught maths) was only about a chapter ahead of us in the trig text book, so we largely endednup teaching ourselves.

Originally Posted by KBs PensNmore

How does this fit in with friginometry????
Kryn

Sine = Opposite ÷ Hypotenuse (SOH)

Cosine = Adjacent ÷ Hypotenuse (CAH)

Tangent= Opposite ÷ Adjacent (TOA)

It's just a way to remember what math rule to apply based on which of the 3 angles of a right triangle you're working from.

I honestly barely remember much of the trig I learned and I'm well overdue for a refresher.

I did a few practice problems and was stumped on the simplifying/re-ordering square root math...