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How do you calculate the angles of a triangle knowing the sides?
Law of cosines
What situation would you be FORCED to use law of cosines as opposed to law of sines?
When none of the angles are known, and using Pythagoras, the triangle is known not to be right angled.
How are sines and cosines used in meteorology?
In trigonometry sines and cosines are used to solve a mathematical problem. And sines and cosines are also used in meteorology in estimating the height of the clouds.
Can trig functions work on non-right triangles?
Yes. Look up the law of sines and the law of cosines as examples. there are also formulas that can find out the area of a non-right triangle.
If you have all sides of a triangle how do you use the law of cosines to solve the angles?
Label the angles of the triangle A, B, and C. Label the side opposite angle A side a, the one opposite angle B side b, and the one opposite angle C side c. Let's say you want to solve for angle A, you use the law of cosines: a^2=b^2+c^2-2bcCosA CosA is the "variable" in this equation, so isolate this. When you have that, you'll have some number (let's call it D) equal to CosA: D=CosA Use the inverse Cos function to find the measure of the angle: Cos^-1(D)=A And you have the measure of angle A. From here you can either use the law of cosines again to find a second angle and then the third, though the easier route is usually to just use the law of sines for find the second angle and then the fact that all three angles add to 180 to find the third.
