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In the right - angled triangle shown, cos 0 equal to?

In the right - angled triangle shown, cos 0 equal to?-example-1
User Cheshireoctopus
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1 Answer

18 votes
18 votes

In a rigth triangle:

θ

The cosine ratio is:


\cos\theta=(adjacent)/(hypotenuse)

In the triangle given, we don't know the length of the adjacent leg to θ. We can find it using the pythagorean theorem:


hypotenuse^2=adjacent^2+opposite^2

In this case:

hypotenuse = 13

opposite = 12

Then:


13^2=adjacent^2+12^2

And solve:


\begin{gathered} adjacent^2=13^2-12^2 \\ . \\ adjacent^2=169-144 \\ . \\ adjacent=√(25) \\ . \\ adajcent=5 \end{gathered}

Now, we can find the cosine ratio:


\cos\theta=(5)/(13)

In the right - angled triangle shown, cos 0 equal to?-example-1
User Mike Chen
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2.8k points