I haven’t forgotten about my pledge to focus more content here towards some of the areas I’ve been asked to tutor on recently. This latest one is designed to help users understand the properties of triangles. It is based on two laws that we learn in trigonometry: the law of sines and the law of cosines. Assume that we have a triangle with sides of lengths a, b, and c and respective angles A, B and C (where the angle A does not touch the side a, the angle B does not touch the side b, and the angle C does not touch the side c). These laws are as stated as follows:

Law of Sines

Law of Cosines
c² = a² + b² – 2*a*b*cos(C)

We can use these laws to determine the sides of a triangle given almost any combination of sides and angles of that triangle (the only one we cannot determine properties from is if we are given all three angles, as this leads to many solutions).

The script generates random triangles, with different combinations of sides and angles revealed and the user’s job is to try to determine the missing sides. There is a button to reveal the solution, or if you’d like to see how we arrive at these values, you can check the “Show work” box.

Hope you enjoy.

Other Blogs covering this topic:
Mathematical!
Algebra 2 Trig