Background: I have just about high school knowledge of math, I am sorry if this is a stupid question.
In school, we learned that when transposing, this:
y = x * 3
would become
x = y / 3
I was reading up on trigonometry, and as I was reading the following:
If we look at the general definition –
we see that there are three variables: the measure of the angle x, and
the lengths of the two sides (Opposite and Hypotenuse). So if we have
any two of them, we can find the third.In the figure above, click 'reset'. Imagine we didn't know the length
of the hypotenuse H. We know that the sine of A (60°) is the opposite
side (26) divided by H.
From our calculator we find that sin60 is 0.866, so we can write
Transposing:
which comes out to 30.02
(From http://www.mathopenref.com/sine.html)
As per the rules of transposition (that I probably got wrong), isn't it supposed to read
H = 26 * 0.866
What am I missing?
Best Answer
We first divide both sides by $H$: $$0.866=\frac{26}{H},$$ then we divide by $0,886$ on both sides: $$0.886H=26,$$ We receive this result: $$H=\frac{26}{0.866}.$$
Thus, the answer is $30.06.$