From psw@wherry.com Thu Jul 21 12:23:26 2005
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 09:42:37 -0400
From: Phil Wherry <psw@wherry.com>
To: Walter Sanford <wsanford@wsanford.com>
Subject: Re: tangent

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Thanks for the kind words.

To come back to an earlier topic: you'll find when you do the drawings
that radians will probably make more sense as an angular measure, too. If
you were to wrap a string around that same unit circle starting from the X
axis until you reach the intersection point between your line and the
circle, the length of the string would be the angular measure in radians.
Note, too, that reduces everything in trig to distances; no longer do you
have to explain angular measures as these arbitrary units: everything is
just a length, whether straight-line or curved!

Phil


Walter Sanford wrote:

>Phil,
>
>Thanks for the quick (& detailed!) reply! I've said it before, you would
>be a *great* math teacher. I need to make some drawings, but your
>explanation makes sense after a quick once-over.
>
>=================================================================
>Walter Sanford, Director           Carl Sandburg Middle School
>Center for Sky Awareness           8428 Fort Hunt Road
>Sandburg Planetarium               Alexandria, VA 22308
>Fairfax County Public Schools      Work: 703-799-6169 -6197 (fax)
>E-mail: wsanford@wsanford.com      Home: 703-765-9392
>AMS Project ATMOSPHERE Atmospheric Education Resource Agent &
>Water in the Earth System (WES) Resource Teacher
>SCSA, Geosystems, & Camp T-Equity - URL: http://www.wsanford.com/
>=================================================================
>  
>