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Is it ever possible that cos(A−B)=cos ⁡A − cos ⁡B?

1 Answer

4 votes

Answer:

yes

Explanation:

I'm going to give you a slightly different answer, but it's going to make sense :-)

First, let's review what "sin" and "cos" really mean. They are functions that take as an input an angle, which we call theta. They output the base (cos) and height (sin) of a triangle which as a hypotenuse of length 1.

Now, let's pick some examples. If we happen to set theta to 45 degress, you will get a triangle that looks like this:

In this case, both sin(theta) and cos(theta) are the same number, the square root of 1/2. So cos(theta) + cos (theta) is 2 times the square tool of 1/2.

Now imagine that we now want to find cos (theta + theta). Remember that theta was 45 degrees, so this will be cos (45 + 45), or cos (90).

But remember that cos is the base of a triangle where theta is the angle with the base. Well, that's not a triangle at all, is it? It's just a vertical line. In fact, cos(90) will be zero.

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