Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Homework Help Thread

I'll be around for the next hour or so. Post any questions to the comments (make sure to include the question that you're working on since I don't have the worksheet with me).

26 comments:

Ashley said...

Ok, Hickman.. cos (x+y) if sin x=5/13 and sin y=4/5..You are supposed to find each exact value

Unknown said...

ok well i need the tan(345)......i broke it down into 300 + 45 and plugged it in the formula and got negative squareroot of 3 over 1 plus squareroot of 3...now what??

Ashley said...

umm..Ok I did not get that. I got the first square root of three as positive

Matt Hickman said...

Use the sum & diff. formula for cos:
cos(x+y)=cosx*cosy-sinx*siny

You know that sinx=5/13 and siny=4/5, so you can substitute that in to get:
cosx*cosy-(5/13)*(4/5)

How can you find cosx & cosy? (Hint: you'll need to use the values for sinx & siny, respectively.)

Unknown said...

oh u mean on top??? well the tan of 300 is negative squareroot of 3 and the tan of 45 is just 1 so when u multiple the top u should get a negative....i think!! lol

Ashley said...

To Tawni: yes i see that now..
Hickman: Can I just pluge those in? well I did anyways

Matt Hickman said...

Tawni:
your negative sqrt(3) is correct, but you should also have a 1 on top from tan(45), giving you (1-sqrt(3))/(1+sqrt(3)).
To rationalize the denominator, you'll need to use the difference of squares and multiply your answer by (1-sqrt(3))/(1-sqrt(3)). Try that and see what you get.

Matt Hickman said...

Ashley:
Can you just plug what in? What did you get for cosx and cosy & how did you get them?

Ashley said...

I am kinda confused now..Now I have cosx*cosy-(4/13).Can I do that?

Unknown said...

so do i just multiply 1 - squareroot of 3 and 1+ squareroot of 3?? bc if i do then i dont see how that gets rid of the squareroot???

Matt Hickman said...

That's fine, but how are you going to figure out what cosx is? And cosy?

Ashley said...

If I knew then I would do it. You said to use them respectively. Que?

Matt Hickman said...

(1-sqrt(3))*(1+sqrt(3)) is a difference of squares. If you can't just see how that would work, try multiplying it out using FOIL. You'll end up with an integer.

Ashley said...

that was to Tawni right..

Matt Hickman said...

It means to use sinx to find cosx and siny to find cosy. Think about it: if you know the sine of an angle, how could you find the cosine of that same angle?

Matt Hickman said...

yes, that was to tawni.

Ashley said...

ohh ok gotcha ;)

Unknown said...

is it -2??

Matt Hickman said...

Tawni: yep.

Matt Hickman said...

Tawni:
Now FOIL out the top and simplify.

Unknown said...

ok kool!! now how do u do the csc of 915 using sum and difference formulas??

Matt Hickman said...

915 is coterminal with 195, so you'll need to find sin(195) using sum and diff. formulas and then take its reciprocal to get csc(195).

Unknown said...

so do i use the sin(150+45) in the formula then solve it and then just flip it??

Matt Hickman said...

Tawni:
Yes.

Unknown said...

ok well now i got 2 whole worsheets finished...im just still really confused on the one u gave us today and i dont think u are goin to be able to help me over here...i think i will just get confused so i think im just goin to wait till tomorrow! but ok thanks for ur help on the other ones!! see you tomorrow bye!

Matt Hickman said...

I'm out. See you tomorrow.