Trigonometry Formulae & Applications (Part 2)

I meant to share more on factor Formulae today. However, a few students are not so sure how to get the R-formulae correctly during their preliminary exams recently. So I thought that I’ll share how they can derive the R-Formulae from the MF26.

The following is the R-Formulae which students should have memorised. It is under assumed knowledge, just saying…

$a \text{cos} \theta \pm b \text{sin} \theta = R \text{cos} (\theta \mp \alpha)$

$a \text{sin} \theta \pm b \text{cos} \theta = R \text{sin} (\theta \pm \alpha)$

where $R = \sqrt{a^2 + b^2}$ and $\text{tan} \alpha = \frac{b}{a}$ for $a > 0, b > 0$ and $\alpha$ is acute.

So here, I’ll write the addition formulae that’s found in MF26.

$\text{sin}(A \pm B) \equiv \text{sin}A \text{cos} B \pm \text{cos} A \text{sin} B$

$\text{cos}(A \pm B) \equiv \text{cos}A \text{cos} B \mp \text{sin} A \text{sin} B$

I’ll use an example I discussed previously.

$f(x) = 3 \text{cos}t - 2 \text{sin}t$

Write $f(x)$ as a single trigonometric function exactly.

Lets consider the formulae from MF26.

$\text{cos}(A \pm B) \equiv \text{cos}A \text{cos} B \mp \text{sin} A \text{sin} B$

$R\text{cos}(A \pm B) \equiv R \text{cos}A \text{cos} B \mp R \text{sin} A \text{sin} B$

We can let

$3 = R \text{cos} B ---(1)$

$2 = R \text{sin} B ---(2)$

$\Rightarrow \sqrt{ 3^2 + 2^2 } = \sqrt{ R^2 \text{cos}^2 B + R^2 \text{sin}^2 B}$

$\Rightarrow \sqrt{13} = R$

$\Rightarrow \frac{R \text{sin} B}{R \text{cos} B} = \frac{2}{3}$

$\Rightarrow \text{tan} B = \frac{2}{3}$

Putting things together, we have that

$f(x) = \sqrt{13} \text{cos} ( t + \text{tan}^{\text{-1}} (\frac{2}{3}))$

About

KS Teng

KS has been teaching H2/H1 Mathematics and IB mathematics for almost two decades. Having taught students from all various Junior Colleges, KS adapts to students' abilities and help them better understand the topics. As someone who loves to teach mathematics and sees it as a truly useful tool in life, KS seeks to enable students to appreciate math. Therefore, his tuition mission is to motivate and cultivate students to be independent and confident thinkers.

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Trigonometry Formulae & Applications (Part 1) – The Culture SG
[…] as it is from secondary Add Math. This formulae is not given in MF26, although students can derive it out using existing formulae in […]
August 29th, 2017 10:26 PM

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Trigonometry Formulae & Applications (Part 2)

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