Sunday, December 18, 2011

How does tan120 = √3....? i keep getting -√3/3?

this is what i did. first, i drew a unit circle and since 120° is in the 2nd quadrant i drew the right triangle in the 2nd quadrant. then since the triangle was in a unit circle, the hypotenuse would be 1 since its a radius and based on 30, 60, 90 and x, 2x, x√3, the shorter leg would be 1/2 and the longer leg (not the hypotenuse) would be -√3/2 since the x-coordinates in the second quadrant are negative. then since tan is opp/adj, it would be opp of 60°/adj of 60° which is (1/2)/(-√3/2), which is -√3/3.

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