Uses of secant and cosecant?

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13 comments, last by Emonious 20 years, 1 month ago
Emonious!

Have you ever seen arcus hyperbolicus in real life (chain bridge)? Have you ever seen the fibonacci row in real life (structure of a pine cone or what)? Maybe you have, but dont think you recognized it. There are so many strange functions you can "see" in real life. (most of them appear in the world of core physics or astrophysics). For example the square(cos(x)) appears, dont know exactly where, but its all about the x-ray radiation of something

I like functions (in spite i have to repeat my Function Analysis II. class)

"Knowledge is no more expensive than ignorance, and at least as satisfying." -Barrin
"Knowledge is no more expensive than ignorance, and at least as satisfying." -Barrin
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It really isn''t that weird that all of these functions appear everywhere, though, if you think about it. It makes sense do to what they really are.

What makes no sense to me, though, is why fibonacci numbers appear everywhere...
The bridge thing sounds interesting, however the teacher stated that csc and sec weren''t actually the same as hyperbolas?
-----------------------------Naze ga muzukashi desu ka...
no they arent. they just have hyperbolic behaviour, becouse of its 1/x part, as secant can be written in the form of f(g(x)) where f(x)=1/x and g(x)=sin(x);
btw a lot of functions with "e" in them looks hyperbolic
(eg. sinh = (e^x - e^-x)/2)
try this function, its really nice...
"Knowledge is no more expensive than ignorance, and at least as satisfying." -Barrin
Both sec and cosec are AFAIK largely an anglosaxan thing. My (swedish) math books only define them with the purpose of allowing us to understand english/american books, they aren''t really used in the swedish text. The same goes for the hyperbolical trig funcitons, although they tend to pop up a bit more. You''re supposed to know what they are, but it isn''t really regarded as a big help in understanding math. Things might be different in other (non anglosaxan) parts of Europe.

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