tangent values

[fighterfish13]

hello, i am currently enrolled in precalcus and we are learning about finding the value of sin, cos, and tan when given the degrees.

For example, the value of sin(30degrees)=1/2

I understand Cosine and Sine well, but i am confused about tangent a little bit. What are the tangent values at 90 degrees, 180 degrees, and 270 degrees?
and if you had to find say the tangent of 100degrees how would you doso?

Thanks

 

[wjm11]

I understand Cosine and Sine well, but i am confused about tangent a little bit. What are the tangent values at 90 degrees, 180 degrees, and 270 degrees?

Hi, Fighterfish,

Here’s two things to think about:

1) If, as you say, you understand Sine and Cosine, you can use this knowledge to find Tanget, because tan = sin/cos.

For example, tan 100 = sin100/cos100.

2) It’s usually helpful to draw a picture. Draw a unit circle on an xy-play (x and y axes) and draw a triangle with vertices on the origin, the circle, and the x-axis. That should help you keep track of opposite, adjacent, and hypotenuse sides of the triangle in order to figure out the sine, cosine, and tangent values.

Hope that helps.