Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Creation of a Unit Circle



Today was basically a work period. The first thing we learned today was how to draw a unit circle that would be useful in the test tomorrow. In the previous lesson we learned what a unit circle was and how we can apply it to problems that will show up throughout the course. Now with the chart we created, we can take our knowledge, put it into a diagram, and see it visually on a piece of paper. An image of what we had to draw is posted beneath. The second thing we did was start a chart that would represent all the special angles found throughout the unit circle. The best way to fill in the chart is too do it from the knowledge you have accumulated up to this point, rather than just copy out from the book. This diagram and chart, especially the unit circle, are important to the success of you the individual. These need to be known and memorized because the only time we will be supplied a copy during testing is tomorrow. The rest of the class was allotted to us to draw our diagrams and fill in our chart, and we could ask our teacher any questions we might have needed answered from previous lessons. There will be a test tomorrow, so study hard, go to sleep a little earlier, have a balanced breakfast in the morning, and most importantly show up on time for math class tomorrow. Good luck classmates!!

If you don’t get any of the materials studied in class or just need another explanation of a concept for any reason, I would highly suggest that you would stay after school for an hour of tutoring. You will not know how helpful it is until you experience it for yourself :)




The unit circle:


http://everobotics.org/projects/roboMagellan/img/UnitCircle.gif





The chart we created(similar except we did a whole circle. IE 360 degrees):

http://www.easycalculation.com/trigonometry/trigonometry-tables.php



Remember!!!

sine.................y-coordinate

cosine.............x-coordinate

tangent..........sin/cos or y/x

cosecant........1/y

secant............1/x

cotangent......x/y