Okay, so if you really do have a right triangle, you can find relationships between the interior angles and the lengths of the sides of the triangle using the trigonometric functions sine, cosine and tangent (i.e. sin, cos and tan).
Now, PLEASE don't judge my handwriting. I just bought a Bamboo pad and pen. I love it, but it feels pretty wonky for now... I'm hoping I'll get better at it once I get more practice in so you won't have to read math tutorials that appear to be written by a 5 year old...
Ergh, I know it looks awful! But that's all there is to it. If you say "SOH CAH TOA" out loud a couple of times it will just be etched into your brain forever. I'm not sure why, but it's one of those things everyone seems to remember... That doesn't necessarily mean people remember what it means or how to use it, but the sounds are easy enough to remember.
Here's an example... Again, excuse my awful scrawl. Practice makes perfect :)
You might have noticed an interesting relationship between sine and cosine. Oh god, so nerdy. Interesting? Yeah, I know what you're thinking. But the more of this stuff you do the more you will realise how everything is related and you just start to see relationships all over the place. Before you know it you'll be going "Ngaaaa" and yelling out "PI IS EXACTLY THREE!" to shock people into being quiet and getting their attention. Yes, the Simpsons episode where Lisa discovers the bully antidote. Anyway, back to the interesting relationship! In the example above, sin40' turns out to be the same as cos50'.
In fact, sin(x)=cos(90-x) and cos(x)=sin(90-x).
Anyway, this post could continue for pages and pages as I go on and on about different trig functions. I'll post some more stuff in the coming days, but for now I hope this has been of some use to you. Please send through any questions you may have. I'm happy to answer or clarify anything.
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