Sine and Cosine
- Author:
- John Williams
Instructions
In the applet below, you'll find a slider for an angle . Point A is the terminal point of the angle on the unit circle.
You'll want to pause to work on the applet. Click the pause button next to the slider on the left.
At the bottom of the list of expressions, generate a new point by entering . This will make a point in which the x-coordinate is the angle and the y-coordinate is the y-value (or height) of point A.
Right-click on the new point you've made. Select 'Show Trace'. This will show a trace of wherever the point goes.
Now we want to see where the new point you made goes as the angle changes. Click on the triangular 'play' button next to the slider for on the left.
Point Tracer
Explain
What is the point illustrating? Why?
Cosine
The instructions above were for generating a trace of the function . Explain how the instructions would be different for a graph of . Follow your instructions to generate a cosine curve.