Write down everything you notice and wonder about this image:

The Unit Circle

This, as you might already know, is the Unit Circle. You may have noticed that this circle has a radius of 1
unit, which is where the name “Unit Circle” comes from. As we know, every point on this circle is exactly
1 unit away from the origin (use the distance formula if you don’t believe me).

You also likely noticed that certain points on this circle are highlighted. Some make sense, like the North,
South, East, and West points are marked. It wouldn’t be hard to have figured out the coordinates of
these points on your own. In addition, the points halfway between these points are also marked. All of
 √2
them are combinations of ± 2
. It won’t really come as a surprise that the other points are the 1/3
marks between the axes. You likely noticed that these points are also different combinations of the
√3 1
same two numbers: ± 2
and ± 2. These numbers do seem weird, but the distance formula shows that
they are 1 unit away from the origin, so they are legitimate points on the unit circle. Where does the
distance formula even come from, seems kinda familiar somehow.

Angles

Of course, there are also other numbers on this circle. These numbers are angles. They show the angle
the line they are on makes with the positive x-axis. In other words, if you were get a protractor and
measure the angle between (1,0) and that line (centered at the origin), then you would get that angle.
Unsurprisingly, there are 360 degrees and you likely already know that there are 2π radians in a
complete circle. But there is something deeper here. The number 2π comes from the formula for the
circumference: Circumference = 2π*radius. As we discussed, the radius here is 1, which means that the
circumference of the circle is 2π. The circumference is the “perimeter” of the circle, meaning that if we
measured the outside of the unit circle, we would see that it is 2π units long. Thinking deeper, half of
the circle would be half of 2π, which is just π. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that halfway around
the circle has an angle of π radians. A quarter of the circumference should be ¼ of 2π or π/2. There we
go again, a quarter away around the circle has an angle of π/2 radians. See if you can figure out the
length of 2/3 of the way around the circle, and see if the angle in radians matches up. So, this tells us
what radians are useful for, they describe the length of the arc that angle makes on the unit circle. If we
have circle with a different radius, we can just multiply the length by multiple the angle in radians by the
radius. Useful to remember.

Why do we care?

The unit circle hides some interesting secrets. You might already have recognized this, but the distance
formula is really just the Pythagorean theorem with extra steps. So let’s keep going with this right
triangle theme. If we take one of these “in-between” lines and just draw a line down to make an angle,
we get a right triangle. Let’s do the line at 150 degrees (which we now know is 5π/6 units around the
circle). Here I drew the line in red and highlighted the triangle it makes in green.

What can we do with this triangle? Well, it is a

right triangle. We also know the hypotenuse is 1
because it is the radius of the circle. We can also
figure out the angle next to the origin. It should
be 180-150=30 degrees. Which means we can
figure out the other angle is 60 degrees. A right
triangle means we can use our trig ratios on it.
We might ask, “What is the sine of the 30
degree angle?” Well the sine should give us the
opposite/hypotenuse. But we already know the
hypotenuse should be 1, which means we are
dividing by 1. So really sin(30ᐤ)=opposite in this
triangle. Well we could plug sin(30ᐤ) into a calculator, but there’s an easier way. We already know the
height of the opposite side: the y-value of the coordinate. The y-value tells us how high up the point is,
so it is the length of the opposite side: ½. Even more interestingly, ½ is also sin(150ᐤ). Useful to know.

Similarly we can use the cosine of 30 and realize that this must be
the x-value of the point. Except this time, we actually have a
negative number, because we are the 2nd quadrant. Really, cos(30ᐤ)
√3 −√3
= 2
. BUT, cos(150ᐤ) = 2
. Absolutely wild. This actually works for
every point on the unit circle. The x-value is the cosine of the angle,
and the y-value is the sine of that angle. This includes the 90, 180,
270, and 0 degree angles. We call the green triangle that we created
the “Reference triange” I like to call it a “bowtie triangle” because if
you draw one in every quadrant you get a little bowtie.

So, we should memorize this.

If you want to memorize the unit circle, more power to you.

Although.. memorization is bad for you and not a useful way to learn. I don’t have the unit circle
memorized, but I can create it very quickly. I like to build it using reference triangles and by knowing the
sides of the 45-45-90 and 30-60-90 triangles. Maybe that isn’t any better, but essentially, as long as you
have a method of determining the points in the first quadrant, you can use the bowtie triangles to figure
out the rest of the quadrants.

Questions to think about

How do you think you could use the points on the Unit circle to figure the points on a circle with a
different radius? (Think about using sine and cosine with a different hypotenuse)

Knowing now that radians are just fractions of the circumference of the circle, how could you convert
between radians and degrees? (Remember that all the way around the circle is 360 degrees)

What might be different if we drew our reference triangles by drawing a horizontal line to connect them
to the y-axis?