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Advanced Trigonometry

New Trigonometric Functions

Trig Identities

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The CAST Rule

Quadrant 2

Quadrant 1

Quadrant 3

Quadrant 4

Sine
function is
positive

All functions
are positive

Tangent

Cosine

function is
positive

function is
positive

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Trigonometric Functions
The real power of trigonometry is in the results you get when you use trigonometric
functions to describe natural phenomena. Lets see what the graphs of sin(x), cos(x) and
tan(x) look like.

/2

3/2

Try using your calculator to find sin(x) for

higher and higher values of x and you will
see that sin(x) fluctuates up and down like
the graph above. It also never goes lower
than -1 or higher than 1.

/2

3/2

The graph of cos(x) is pretty much the same

as sin(x). The only difference is the starting
point. In fact, you can envision the graph of
cos(x) as being the same as sin(x) except
moved over to the left a bit.

X
/2

3/2

Fun with Trig Functions

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Solving Trigonometric Expressions

Example 1:

, 3, 4

So in fact the solution for sin(x) = 0 is x = n where n can be any integer.

Example 2:
Solve
We can look at the graph or use our inverse trig functions and see that cos(x) = 1 at more
than one point again. So we can say that cos(x) = 1 at x = 0, but again, that is not the only
solution. The function also goes to 1 at x = 2, 4, 6 and so on.
So in fact the solution will be cos(x) = 1 at x = 2n where n can be any whole number.
Example 3:

)/3. Again that is not the only

place that it happens, it can happen on the same arc as the answer above at )/3 and then
keep repeating periodically.
Our final solution for 1+sin(x)=0.5 is x=
where m = 3, 5, 7 and so on.

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)/3 where n = 2, 4, 6, and x = [

]/3

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Example 4:
Solve
This may look daunting but we can use one of our trig identities to simplify and make it a lot
easier to solve. Sub in the identity tan(x) = sin(x)/cos(x):

Example 5:

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Example 6:

12 m

9m

Try solving for the opposite side using the sine and cosecant functions!
Example 7:

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