Trigonometry Identities

There a number of “identities” in trigonometry that can be found from the basic ideas of sin, cos and tan as explained in my earlier post. These identities can help in solving equations involving trig functions, especially when there are 2 or more different functions as the often allow you to write the equation in terms of one function, eg sin, that you can then solve.

One of the identities is:

sin² + cos² = 1.

To prove this consider a right angled triangle with side a,b and c as shown below

From this we can use Pythagoras theorem to say:

a²+b²=c²

now we know

sin t = b/c so b = csin t

cos t = a/c so a = ccos t

substituting these values in the above equation we get

(csint)² +(ccost)² = c²

canceling the c² we get

sint² + cost² = 1

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There are trig functions that are equal to 1 over sin, cos and tan called cosec = 1/sin, sec = 1/cos and cot = 1/tan. These can be remembered using the third letter rule as the third letter of each of these corresponds to the the function it is one over.

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Using these a cos² + sin² = 1 we can calculate other identities

tan²t + 1 = sec^2t

We can obtain this by dividing through by cos² as we know sin/cos = tan, cos/cos = 1 and 1/cos = sec.

Other similar identities can be obtained for cosec and cot.