Hi, guys! I'm Nancy.

And I'm going to show you how to solve a right triangle.

Which I know pretty sounds pretty vague, like, what does that mean exactly? It just

means find all the missing sides and angles. And it's not that bad. Let me show

you how to do it.

Alright. Say you have a right triangle and you're suppose to solve that right

triangle. I know that's a little unclear. Like I said, it's a little vague as to

what that means. It just means find any missing sides or angles that are not

already labeled on your right triangle. And I'm going to show you how to do that.

But first, just in case you were wondering if this is some kind of special right

triangle.. like 30, 60, 90 or 45, 45, 90. I'm showing you this one on purpose

because I know that 34 degrees is suspiciously similar to 30 degrees. But

unless you have exactly 30 degrees as an angle or 60 degrees or 45 degrees, it's

not a special right triangle. Not so special. So we can't use those. What can

we do? Well, if you have a right triangle and you know at least one side and an

angle that's not the right angle, you can use a trig function to find the sides
that

you don't know. And the first thing to do is to label those sides that you're

looking for that you don't know. Give them names. They deserve that much, the
dignity

of having a name. And you can use whatever letters or variables you want. I'm going

to use lowercase a and lowercase c. And I'm just using those because there's this

convention, this standard you might see where for the big A, the angle capital A,

the side that's directly across from it, a lot of times, it's labeled little a,

lowercase a. The side directly across from capital C is little c. And the side

directly across from capital B angle is lowercase b, but we don't need that

because we already know what that is, 8. So I said that you could use a trig

function to find each of these sides, but how do you know which trig function,
sine,

cosine, tangent to pick? Good question.

Alright, so these are three of the main trig functions: sine, cosine, and tangent.
This is a memory trick: SOH-CAH-TOA. It's a mnemonic device meant to help you
remember

that sine of an angle is equal to the opposite side over the hypotenuse, cosine of

an angle is adjacent over hypotenuse, tangent of an angle is opposite over

adjacent. What are these opposite, adjacent, hypotenuse things I'm talking

about? If you don't know, you can go to my other trig video and jump to that. I do
a

whole introduction and explanation of that. But basically it depends what angle

you're focused on, what angle you're looking from. We have this 34 degree angle

in our triangle. From the point of view of that angle looking out, from it's

perspective looking out, this is the opposite side because it's directly

opposite that angle, directly across. Opposite side. The longest side is always

the hypotenuse, the one that's straight across from the right angle, the 90 degree

angle. It's always the hypotenuse. And then the other side that's next to our

angle but is not opposite and is not the longest side is the adjacent side. ADJ or

A in our trick. So how do you know which of those three to pick? Well, say that we

want to find this side, solve for a, here's the rule of thumb. Pick the one of

these three, pick the one that includes both the side that you want, that you're

looking for, that you don't know, and the side that you know, something that you do

know the number for, the value. So we want one that includes the opposite and the

adjacent because we're looking for a and we have 8. Opposite and adjacent, O and A,

you may have already guessed, is tangent trig function; tan is opposite over

adjacent, OA, the TOA in SOH-CAH-TOA. So all we have to do now is write a little

equation. Tangent of 34 degrees, tan 34 degrees equals opposite over adjacent,

which for us is a/8.

Alright. So here's your equation. You want to solve for a, so you want to get a

alone. And right now you have this divided by 8 over there that you don't want. So
to

undo that or get rid of that, you can multiply by 8, but both sides, multiply

both sides by 8.

OK. So the 8 in the bottom goes away over there and you just have a = 8tan34,
a = 8tan34. And that's really the answer, but you may to get an actual number like
a

decimal and round to the nearest tenth or something like that. So for that, you'll

need to plug this into your calculator, so either a scientific calculator or a

graphing calculator. But make sure that you're in degree mode when you use the

tangent 34 degrees and not in radian mode, otherwise you'll get weird number that's

not right. So in degree mode, when you plug in 8tan34, and if you round to the

nearest tenth, it's...a is approximately, roughly 5.4.

So a is about 5.4, that opposite side is about 5.4 long. OK. So you have two

sides of the triangle and you don't have the third, there's one side left that you

haven't solved for. If you have two sides and you want the third, you have a choice

in how you find it. You can either use a trig function or you can use Pythagorean

theorem. So you can pick your poison, whichever one you want. I'm going to show

you both. Using the trig function, it's the same idea as before. If you want to

find this side c, pick the trig function that includes both that side, which is the

hypotenuse, and the side that you do know the number for the value of, which is

adjacent. So you want the one that includes hypotenuse and adjacent, which is

cosine because cosine is adjacent over hypotenuse. So now you just need to write

an equation like you did before that's cosine 34 degrees equals adjacent over

hypotenuse, which is 8/c.

OK, and you want to solve for c. It's down there in the denominator in the

bottom, which is different from the one before. How do you solve when the variable

you want is down in the denominator? There's an extra step. You want to get rid

of it in the denominator and bring it up top. And the trick is multiply both sides

by c so that you clear it over there and bring it up on one side. So multiply both

sides by c.

So we're closer. You have c here. But you also have this times cosine 34 degrees.
You

want to get c alone so anything that's attached that you don't want there, divide

out. So divide both sides by cosine 34 degrees.

So c = 8/cos34. Again, just put this in your calculator using degree mode, and if
you

round it, it's roughly 9.6.

OK. So there's another way to find that

last side. Like I said, you could use the Pythagorean theorem.

OK. So here's the Pythagorean theorem or pythag as the cool kids say. Just don't

call it the "pie-tha-gorean thee-orem" like I did when I was little, it's
definitely

wrong. Definitely weird and the wrong emPHAsis for the sylLABles. But basically

it's a²+b²=c², and hopefully you've seen it before. c is always the hypotenuse, and

a and b are the legs of the triangle that are on either side of the right angle. If

you have two of them, you can find the other. And we have b. We did find a

earlier with our tangent. It was about 5.4. And we want c. So we can use the

numbers that we found... we have our a and b, and plug them in, and solve for c.
And

it's better to use the unrounded decimal, by the way, which hopefully you still
have

in your calculator because that will give you a more accurate answer in the end.

So when you plug it in, it looks like this,

and this, if you square it, it turns out to be 29 point something plus 8² which

is 64. So all together, it will look like this..

So it's 93 point something, something, something equals c². And to get just c, you

can square root both sides to get c alone. And use the positive answer since this
is

a length, a distance that should be positive. And when you do that, c is about

9.6, which we knew already.

So that's how you can use the Pythagorean theorem.

And found that the hypotenuse is about 9.6 long.

OK, so you found all the sides of the

triangle. I know you may think you're done but there's one last thing to figure out
and

clearly label, and it's this other angle because it's not already clearly labeled.

Don't worry, this is the fastest, easiest part because in a triangle, all the
angles
inside have to add up to 180 degrees. So if we already know for sure that this is
34

degrees, and this angle here is 90 degrees because it's a right angle, we know that
the 90

and 34 and whatever this other angle is, better equal 180 degrees. And we can write

an equation that says that.

So here's the equation, all three angles, including angle B, which we're looking

for, have to equal 180. If we clean this up, those two together, 124. And if you

subtract that from both sides, you'll see that angle B has to be 56 degrees.

So that angle is 56 degrees and the triangle is totally solved. All sides

and angles are labeled, and you're done. Just a few things I want to mention.

If you got a different side given to you in the beginning, like if you weren't told

this side, but you were instead given the hypotenuse and no other sides, don't

worry, it's the same kind of steps. Just make sure you pick a trig function that

includes both that hypotenuse you know and whatever side you're looking for. So
it's

the same idea. Also, if you are given no angles in the beginning other than the 90

degree angle, you may need to use inverse trig functions to find an angle and fully

solve. And that's a whole other video if you see that. And one last thing, don't

worry if you see a triangle given to you that's, like, rotated, it's oriented

differently. No matter what orientation you get, it's the same idea. Just focus on

an angle, figure out for yourself which side is opposite, which side is

hypotenuse, which side is adjacent to it, and then pick a trig function knowing
what

you have and what you need. So it's the same kind of steps.

So I hope that helped you understand how to solve right triangles with trig.

I know that trigonometry is everyone's favorite...

It's OK.You don't have to like math..

But you can like my video! So if you did, please click 'Like' or subscribe.