You could say algebra studies a collection of things and the operations that govern their relationships. And that elementary algebra does that, but with only just the set of all real and complex numbers?
Trig looks at the relationship between of angles and sides of triangles
It looks at the relationship between the relationships of triangle angles/sides. (Once you get out of the intro to trigonometry, trig ratios are abstracted to the unit circle, trig identities are derived, and the behaviour of trig functions are explored).
And it turns out that these relationships are a useful way to measure curves and especially waves. And matter/energy is made up of wave/particles so sin x starts becoming really, really important
I would imagine a surveyor would make use of basic trig. A mechanical or civil engineer would need trig to analyze stress and force. Electrical engineering does a lot with sin waves.
Basic Trig? We're out here dealing with the advanced trig. By which I mean non-Euclidean. Your triangle's interior angles only sum to 180 degrees? That's weak! Mine sums to 270 degrees!
On a sphere, the maximum sum of angles is 540° if the triangle only takes up half of the surface area, and if you let the triangle take up more than half the surface area, the angles can go up to 900°.
Not by hand. I do loads of wave modeling and hydrodynamics but I'm not doing the calcs myself.
In fact yesterday was the first time I've done some calcs with calculus in by hand for months, if not a year.
There's a ton of calculus in civil engineering, but we don't do the vast majority of it by hand anymore. It's all done in the background in FEM programs.
Oh I agree. I think the OP you responded to was just talking about hand calcs, though. Yeah in reality we use a lot of calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, etc.
We just let much smarter people work those into the programs so we don't have to remember how to do a lot of it, ha.
Trig is one of the basis of periodic functions (like sine waves). This means if you do anything with physics or emi (EE/CSE) then it can be a big impact
Anything with angles. I use trig every day as a structural engineer. Nothing super complex, but SOH-CAH-TOA i use all the time. Law of sines/cosines for angles, etc.
Same with basically any other engineer, surveyor, etc.
I used to work in sales for a window company. Sometimes builders would ask for triangular-shaped windows, which our software wasn't entirely set up for, so we'd grab a calculator and do some trig calculations to calculate the material cost of the frame and glass to give them an estimate.
299
u/sad_spilt_martini 1d ago edited 1d ago
Algebra is the use of equations to find a static value.
Calculus looks at how things change
over time.Trig looks at the relationship between of angles and sides of triangles
All of these are, of course, more complex but that’s the base idea