08-28-2009, 06:18 AM
Quote:A funny thing happened when I was a senior in high school. I forgot to bring my calculator on the day of a physics test. Besides long division and multiplication, part of solving the problems was to take trig functions and punch them into your calculator. I didn't have my calculator. :ph34r: I worked the problems to the end with the trig functions still in the answer. Then, being way to smart for my own good when I was 18, I *estimated* the decimal equivalent of the trig functions in my head and put it behind one of those squiggly equals signs. :lol:I came close enough that when the science teacher handed back my graded test, he looked at me as if I had just beamed down from the Enterprise. Lot of good this stuff does me now that I work in shipping. :lol:
Next time just remember that sin(x) is about x for small values of x, and cos(x) is about 1 - x^2/2 for small values of x. Or memorize the Taylor expansions, they're not very complicated for sin and cos.