Trigonometry Explained for Beginners! (using Examples)

In this video we'll cover what the trig functions mean, and how to use them to find the side lengths and angles of triangles. I'll explain "SOH CAH TOA" and inverse trig functions as well!

This video is centered on doing examples! Grab some paper and follow along. By the end you'll have a ton of practice doing trig that you'll actually be asked about in physics!

Personal note from Nick: Trig is tough. It was tough for me, it's tough for everybody. But it is worth it to know and I tried my best to make it as understandable as possible. (I have remade large portions of the video twice to try and get the absolute best explanations I could.) But don't hesitate to ask in the comments with further questions! You may well save someone else having the same issue! (I will try my best to answer!)

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
3:07 Note about calculators
4:19 What does trig allow us to do?
6:39 "Standard" non-intuitive statement about trig you've learned in class

7:21 Core of Lesson
9:22 What does "sine" ask your calculator to do?
14:12 Example using sine
18:08 Example using sine
20:08 Standard notation and what it means
21:28 "sin(theta) = opp/hyp" notation and what it means
22:05 Example in standard/quick notation

24:19 What are cosine and tangent? (Compared to sine)
31:04 How to know which side is "adjacent"
32:41 SOH CAH TOA

35:56 Finding angles using inverse trig functions
42:32 Ton of examples!

[maryellens]

Hey Nick! I did not know anything about trig before watching your video. You did a great job! It was easy to follow and play along.
I had one problem and it seems to be a calculator thing.
I downloaded 3 different apps. I made sure they were set to degrees.
They all have buttons that say “tanh”.
They all returned incorrect answers.
I accessed two web based calculators. Again degrees.
They both had buttons that said “arctan”.
Those returned correct results.
Google seems to be saying “tanh” is different than “arctan”.
You might want to mention this to your audience so they don’t take a wrong turn like I did.