Geometric proof of angle sum identities for sine and cosine

algebra-precalculustrigonometry

Erik Jacobsen's YouTube video "Sine and Cosine Addition Formula Proof" features a geometric proof of the formula.

I have two questions:

  1. What is the reason intuitively to place the hypotenuse of the "upper triangle" on top of the hypotenuse of the lower triangle? (Procedurally I can 'see' why, but I cannot put my finger on what is the reason behind it)

  2. How does this proof generalize to all angles? To my mind it seems that this setting up of the triangles is very specific, I can't see how this proves that the conclusion holds true for all angles.

Best Answer

First of all, never expect there to be an intuitively obvious path to a proof. In many cases proof involves trying a few things to see what works and what does not work.

In this case, however, it does seem intuitive to try a proof with two triangles, one with angle $A$ at one vertex and one with angle $B$ at one vertex. Then it seems intuitive that we might try to put the angle $A$ of one triangle at the same point as the angle $B$ of the other triangle and to make the two angles share a common side so that we get an angle of $A + B$. This means either the hypotenuses of both triangles are touching, or the adjacent legs of both triangles are touching, or the hypotenuse of one triangle touches the adjacent leg of the other triangle.

Once we choose two triangle sides that should touch, we have to decide how long each side should be. Should one be longer than the other? If so, by how much? Or should they be the same length?

In this proof the choice was to touch the hypotenuse of one triangle to the adjacent leg of the other triangle and to make those two sides the same length. It works. But perhaps some other choice would also have worked or might even have been simpler. You don't really know until you try it.

As for generalizing to more angles, if the proof had used a ruler to measure the sides to scale then it would apply only to the exact angles shown (and would not be an exact proof, since ruler measurements are only as good as your ability to see how close a point is to the marks on the ruler). But that is not what the proof does. It draws the triangles in schematic form but never uses the actual scale of the figure to conclude anything. You could draw the triangles with different proportions and all the labels on all the sides would still be correct exactly as shown in the proof, as long as $A$ and $B$ are both positive and $A+B$ is less than a right angle.

The proof does not generalize (at least not easily) to angles $A$ and $B$ such that $A+B$ is greater than a right angle, because if $A+B$ is greater than a right angle the figure will be structured differently than shown in this proof. So it is not a proof of the most general form of the angle-sum identity for the sine function.

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