Education Technology

Graphs of the OTHER Trig Functions

Subject Area
Math: Precalculus: Trigonometry (Triangle and Circular Functions)
Level
9-12
Activity Time
45 Minutes
Software
TI-Nspire™ CX
TI-Nspire™ CX CAS
TI Calculator
TI-Nspire™ CX series
TI-Nspire™ CX CAS/CX II CAS
TI-Nspire Version
5.0
Resource Types
Lessons
Format
TNS

Graphs of the OTHER Trig Functions

Activity Overview

This lesson involves providing opportunities for students to explore and make sense of the graphs of the cotangent, secant, and cosecant functions.

Objectives

  • Students will identify the values of cotangent, secant and cosecant for various values of θ from the unit circle.
  • Students will understand the correspondence of the graphs of cotangent, secant and cosecant to the unit circle.
  • Students will identify and explain features of the graphs of cotangent, secant, and cosecant, where the functions are undefined, or where they have intercepts.

Vocabulary

  • sine
  • cosine
  • cotangent
  • secant
  • cosecant
  • unit circle

About the Lesson

This lesson involves providing opportunities for students to explore and make sense of the graphs of the cotangent, secant, and cosecant functions.
As a result, students will:

  • Use sliders to move a point around the unit circle, observing the changes in function values for cotangent, secant, and cosecant, and observing the connections to the graphs of each of the three functions.
  • Make and test conjectures about the graphs of the cotangent, secant, and cosecant functions based on observations from the unit circle.

Subject Area
Math: Precalculus: Trigonometry (Triangle and Circular Functions)
Level
9-12
Activity Time
45 Minutes
Software
TI-Nspire™ CX
TI-Nspire™ CX CAS
TI Calculator
TI-Nspire™ CX series
TI-Nspire™ CX CAS/CX II CAS
TI-Nspire Version
5.0
Resource Types
Lessons
Format
TNS
iPad is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
Vernier EasyData,Vernier EasyLink and Vernier EasyTemp are registered trademarks of Vernier Science Education.