Working with Sines and Cosines

The Pythagorean identity and the double-angle formulas are of critical importance in calculus, for reasons we'll discuss later (they are essential tools for the
evaluation of some common types of integrals). The sum-of-angle formulas are
also extremely important, but for a dierent reason, which we will discuss now.
In some important applications of calculus to physics and engineering, we'll
have input information of the form
f (t) = B sin t

(here B is the amplitude and is the angular frequency), and we'll nd that
our mathematical analysis will result in output of the form
g(t) = a sin t + b cos t.

This is, in fact, still a sine wave. It has the same angular frequency as the input,
but a dierent amplitude and phase. That is, it can be re-written in the form1
g(t) = A sin(t + ).

How do we accomplish this? The key is the double angle formula, sin(1 +

2 ) = sin 1 cos 2 + sin 2 cos 1 . With this, we have

A sin(t + ) = A sin t cos + A cos t sin ,

and we can work backwards from this to determine what the values of A and
must be.
Example:

Express y = 5 cos 2t 3 sin 2t in the form y = A sin(2t + ).

Solution:
Since A sin(2t+) = A sin 2t cos +A cos 2t sin = (A sin ) cos 2t+
(A cos ) sin 2t, and we want this to be equal to 5 cos 2t 3 sin 2t, we match up
the coecients. That is, looking at the coecients of cos 2t in the two expres-

sions, we conclude that

A sin = 5.

(1)

Similarly, looking at the coecients of sin 2t, we conclude that

A cos = 3.

(2)

So, we've arrived at a system of two equations in two unknowns, which we hope
to be able to solve for the unknowns A and .2
1 Note: if we graph g(t) versus t, we nd that, in comparison to an unshifted sine wave such
)].
as f (t), g(t) is shifted to the left by the quantity /; since A sin (t + ) = A sin [(t +

However, to someone with more experience in physics or engineering, it would make more
sense to graph g(t) versus the quantity t, in which case the shift is simply . For this reason
when we speak of the phase (or the phase shift), we are referring to , rather than /.
2 Since this is a nonlinear system, there is no guarantee that there will be solutions, or that
the solutions will be unique. We simply have to look for solutions and see what we nd.

Figure 1:
Now, notice that if we square both sides of both equations and add the
results, we discover that A2 sin2 + A2 cos2 = 25 + 9, so A2 = 34 (we've
managed to eliminate from the system of equations). Should we take the
positive root or the negative one? This is entirely our choice; each will simply
require a dierent value of to accompany it. However, since we want to be
able to refer to A as
the amplitude of the combined sine wave, we'll choose the
positive one: A = 34.
Next, we can easily eliminate A from the system of equations by dividing
one by the other. This tells us that tan = 5/3. Reaching for a calculator,
we nd that Tan1 (5/3) 1.030 radians. We have to be careful, here,
though; this is not necessarily the correct value for ! In fact, in this particular
example it isn't; since we've selected A to be positive, equations 1 and 2 tell us
that sin is positive, and cos is negative, so must be in the 2nd quadrant,
th (see Figure 1). The angle in that quadrant whose tangent is -5/3 is
not the 4
1
= Tan (5/3) + 2.111 radians (although we could also add any multiple
of 2 to this, so for example we might choose to set = Tan1 (5/3)
4.172 radians).
We now have that

34 sin (2t + 2.111).

In general we can conclude that a sin t + b cos t = a2

+ b2 sin(t + ),
b
where tan = a . It's safe to remember the formula A = a2 + b2 for the
5 cos 2t 3 sin 2t =

amplitude, but determining the phase shift takes more care; we need to use the
signs of a and b to determine which quadrant lies in before we can decide
whether = Tan1 ( ab ) or = Tan1 ( ab ) + .

Note:
If you
prefer, you could calculate more directlyfrom equation 1,
using sin = 5/ 34, or from equation 2, using cos = 3/ 34. In any case,
though, the same amount of care is required, since the arcsine and arccosine
functions are just as dicult to work with as the arctangent is.