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I recommend that you also study the other lessons in my extensive collection of online programming tutorials. You will find a consolidated index at www.DickBaldwin.com .
Many of the computational requirements for an introductory physics course involve trigonometry. This module provides a brief tutorial on trigonometry fundamentals that is designed to be accessible to blind students.
Sine, cosine, and tangent
There are many topics, such as identities, that are covered in an introductory trigonometry course that won't be covered in this module. Instead,this module will concentrate mainly on performing computations on right angles using the sine, cosine, and tangent of an angle.
If I find it necessary to deal with identities in a later module, I will come back and update this module accordingly.
Download files
You will need to download two svg graphics files to complete the work in this module. Click this link to download a zip file named Phy1020.zip containing those svg files.
If you don't already have it, you may also need to download and install the free IVEO Viewer software. As of this writing, the Viewer is available fordownloading at (External Link) .
Graph board and protractor
Unless you can create tactile graphics on paper, you will need your graph board and your protractor to perform the exercises in this module. Please prepare your graph board with perpendicular horizontaland vertical axes with the origin located near the center of the graph board.
The most common unit of angular measurement used by the general public is the degree. As you are probably aware, there are 360 degrees in a circle.
The most common unit of angular measurement used by scientists and engineers is theradian.
(If you would like more background on radians, go to (External Link) .)
Conversions between radians and degrees
You may or may not be aware that one radian is equal to approximately 57.3 degrees. It is easier to remember, however, that 180 degrees is equal to PIradians where PI is the mathematical constant having an approximate value of 3.14159. We will use this latter relationship extensively to convert fromdegrees to radians and to convert from radians to degrees while working through the exercises in these modules.
An exercise involving degrees and radians
Let's do a short exercise involving degrees and radians. Please create an html file containing the code shown in Listing 1 and open it in your browser.
| Listing 1 . Conversions between radians and degrees. |
|---|
<!-- File JavaScript01.html --><html><body><script language="JavaScript1.3">function toRadians(degrees){
return degrees*Math.PI/180}//end function toRadians
//============================================//function toDegrees(radians){
return radians*180/Math.PI}//end function toDegrees
//============================================//var degrees = 90
var radians = toRadians(degrees)document.write("degrees = " + degrees +
" : radians = " + radians + "</br>")
radians = 1degrees = toDegrees(radians)
document.write("radians = " + radians +" : degrees = " + degrees + "</br>")
radians = Math.PIdegrees = toDegrees(radians)
document.write("radians = " + radians +" : degrees = " + degrees)</script></body></html> |
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