Question

Will anybody explain to me how Sine Cosine and Tangent works? I missed school when they taught us, and when they tried to explain it to me I became brutally lost. :)

Answer 1

Our trigonometric functions allow us to relate `the angle` of a triangle to its `sides`.

Answer 2

We have this clever acronym for remembering the relationships:\[\Large\rm \color{red}{\text{Soh}}\color{green}{\text{Cah}}\color{royalblue}{\text{Toa}}\]
The `sine` of an angle is equivalent to the ratio of the `opposite` side to the `hypotenuse`.
That's what the `o` and `h` stand for.\[\large\rm \color{red}{\sin x=\frac{opposite}{hypotenuse}}\]

Answer 3

Let's first look at a right triangle,
and make sure we understand how to label the sides.

Answer 4

So if this is my triangle, with angle x labeled here.
Do you know which side to label as your `hypotenuse`?

Answer 5

The side that is on top of the x, aka the "long side"

Answer 6

Good. The longest side.
Another way I like to think of it, is in relation to the `right angle`.
It's always the side `opposite the right angle`.