Education Technology


Graphs of Sine, Cosine, and Tangent

Activity Overview

Students are introduced to the shapes of the sine, cosine, and tangent graphs. They will use a unit circle to calculate the x and y lengths of a triangle placed at different values along the circle. Tools are provided which support them in collecting and organizing data, building and testing conjectures, while laying the foundations for future work in precalculus.

Key Steps

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    Students will move the triangle around the unit circle, using the point on the circle. At the special angles, or as close as possible, students should stop and put the values for the distance of the triangle along the x‑axis (xdist) in the table on the worksheet for the appropriate angle.