Differentiation of

the sine and cosine

functions from
rst principles
mc-TY-sincos-2009-1
In order to master the techniques explained here it is vital that you undertake plenty of practice
exercises so that they become second nature.
After reading this text, and/or viewing the video tutorial on this topic, you should be able to:
dierentiate the function sin x from rst principles
dierentiate the function cos x from rst principles
Contents
1. Introduction 2
2. The derivative of f(x) = sin x 3
3. The derivative of f(x) = cos x 4
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1. Introduction
In this unit we look at how to dierentiate the functions f(x) = sin x and f(x) = cos x from rst
principles. We need to remind ourselves of some familiar results.
The derivative of f(x).
The denition of the derivative of a function y = f(x) is
dy
dx
= lim
x0
f(x + x) f(x)
x
Two trigonometric identities.
We will make use of the trigonometric identities
sin C sin D = 2 cos
C + D
2
sin
C D
2
cos C cos D = 2 sin

C + D
2

sin

C D
2

The limit of the function

sin

.
As (measured in radians) approaches zero, the function
sin

tends to 1. We write this as

lim
0
sin

= 1
This result can be justied by choosing values of closer and closer to zero and examining the
behaviour of
sin

.
Table 1 shows values of and
sin

as becomes smaller.
sin
sin

1 0.84147 0.84147
0.1 0.09983 0.99833
0.01 0.00999 0.99983
Table 1: The value of
sin

as tends to zero is 1.
You should verify these results with your calculator to appreciate that the value of
sin

ap-
proaches 1 as tends to zero.
We now use these results in order to dierentiate f(x) = sin x from rst principles.
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2. Differentiating f(x) = sinx
Here f(x) = sin x so that f(x + x) = sin(x + x).
So
f(x + x) f(x) = sin(x + x) sin x
The right hand side is the dierence of two sine terms. We use the rst trigonometric identity
(above) to write this in an alternative form.
sin(x + x) sin x = 2 cos
x + x + x
2
sin
x
2
= 2 cos
2x + x
2
sin
x
2
= 2 cos(x +
x
2
) sin
x
2
Then, using the denition of the derivative
dy
dx
= lim
x0
f(x + x) f(x)
x
=
2 cos(x +
x
2
) sin
x
2
x
The factor of 2 can be moved into the denominator as follows, in order to write this in an
alternative form:
dy
dx
=
cos(x +
x
2
) sin
x
2
x/2
= cos

x +
x
2

sin
x
2
x
2
We now let x tend to zero. Consider the term
sin
x
2
x
2
and use the result that lim
0
sin

= 1 with
=
x
2
. We see that
lim
x0
sin
x
2
x
2
= 1
Further,
lim
x0
cos

x +
x
2

= cos x
So nally,
dy
dx
= cos x
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3. The derivative of f(x) = cos x.
Here f(x) = cos x so that f(x + x) = cos(x + x).
So
f(x + x) f(x) = cos(x + x) cos x
The right hand side is the dierence of two cosine terms. This time we use the trigonometric
identity
cos C cos D = 2 sin

C + D
2

sin

C D
2

to write this in an alternative form.

cos(x + x) cos x = 2 sin
x + x + x
2
sin
x
2
2 sin
2x + x
2
sin
x
2
= 2 sin(x +
x
2
) sin
x
2
Then, using the denition of the derivative
dy
dx
= lim
x0
f(x + x) f(x)
x
=
2 sin(x +
x
2
) sin
x
2
x
The factor of 2 can be moved as before, in order to write this in an alternative form:
dy
dx
=
sin(x +
x
2
) sin
x
2
x/2
= sin

x +
x
2

sin
x
2
x
2
We now want to let x tend to zero. As before
lim
x0
sin
x
2
x
2
= 1
Further,
lim
x0
sin

x +
x
2

= sin x
So nally,
dy
dx
= sin x
So, we have used dierentiation from rst principles to nd the derivatives of the functions sin x
and cos x.
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