Question

5. When I sine an angle like 60°, it gives me a value like 0.866025403. What does this number represent?

Answer 1

Answer:

See below

Step-by-step explanation:

The number you described is the same as $sin(60^{\circ})=\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}$ where the sine of an angle is the ratio between a right triangle's opposite side to the angle and the hypotenuse. So, in this case, if we had a right triangle with a height of $\sqrt{3}$ units and a hypotenuse of 2 units, the ratio between the two sides will result in the value you provided. This right triangle in particular would be a 30-60-90 triangle.

In the case of a unit circle, it’s the y-coordinate of the point where a 60° angle in the standard position intersects a unit circle and a right triangle is created from that.