Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Hyperbolic Functions

Hyperbolic functions are similar to sin,cos tan etc in trigonometry and share many similar rules. Usually hyperbolic functions are written like the trigonometric ones but with a h on the end, eg sinh and cosh.

The hyperbolic functions can be all written in terms of e, sinh and cosh are as follows

sinh(x) = (ex - e-x)/2
cosh(x) = (ex + e-x)/2

And tanh can be defined as sinh/cosh so

tanh = (ex - e-x) / (ex + e-x)

though this is often written as
tanh = (e2x - 1) / (e2x + 1)
by timesing the top and bottom by ex

the other other hyperbolic functions sinh as sech, coth etc can be found in the same way as they would be in trigonometry, by using 1 over the other functions, ie sech = 1/cosh

Most of the identities in trigonometry have a similar identity with hyperbolic functions, however in most of these whenever there is a sin2 it changes to a -sinh2
so
cosh2 - sinh2=1
which you can work out by placing the equations with e’s in the place of sinh and cosh

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