Illustrated · 1 min
Properties of Cosine
Cosine is a trigonometric function of an angle. It has a number of properties, such as being periodic and even. In the context of a triangle, for the specified angle, cosine is the ratio of the length of the side that is ADJACENT the angle to the length of the longest side, or HYPOTENUSE, of the triangle.
Image by Nicostella via Wikimedia Commons
Once a triangle to analyze is chosen, we can write:
Like I said above, the cosine function is periodic, which means that it is a function returning to the same value at regular intervals. Cosine has a period of , which means we can write it as: or, in a more general sense,

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As you can see from the graph above, the value of will always be between the values of and .



