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Home Q & A Board Science-Related Homework Help Mathematics
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irina irina
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11 years ago
Suppose you have borrowed two calculators from friends, but you do not know whether they are set to work in radians or degrees. Thus you ask each calculator to evaluate tan 89.9. One calculator replies with an answer of -2.62. The other calculator replies with an answer of 572.96. Without futher use of a calculator, how would you decide which calculator is using radians and which calculator is using degrees?
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#1
11 years ago
89.9 degrees is in quadrant 1, where all the trig functions are positive

a negative value of tan means you're in quadrant 2** (typo corrected) or 4, which must be the calculator in radian mode
(since we know that tan 89.9 degrees is positive, tan 89.9 radians is the only choice which could be negative)

572.96 ==> degrees
-2.62 ==> radians
wrote...
#2
11 years ago
if a calculator could measure angles in radians, it most likely be able to switch to degrees, so you could figure it out by playing around with the buttons which angle it was set to.
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#3
11 years ago
Ask it to evaluate Tan 90. If it returns an error, the calculator is setup in degrees.
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wrote...
#4
11 years ago
The degrees calc will evaluate tan(89.9) as 572.96.
tan(90) -> infinity so 572.96 would be the answer for degrees just because it's closer to infinity.
wrote...
#5
11 years ago
**sorry, i think i have to correct the first person's answer, most likely i agree what he said overall, but he said "that tan is negative when it happens in quadrant 3,4" actually it's in quadrant 2, and  4 where the tan is negative.
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