## Mirandaregina one year ago How do I find the measure of theta? (image attached)

1. Mirandaregina

2. anonymous

look at it like a triangle like this |dw:1435611781411:dw| then use either sin, cos, or tan to solve for theta. Do you know which one to use?

3. Mirandaregina

@mastermindkakashi no, I don't know which one to use

4. anonymous

oh well I like to think of SOH CAH TOA to help me figure it out. You would use Tangent to solve for theta since 6 is Opposite and 8 is Adjacent. so in your calculator put in $\tan \frac{ 6 }{ 8}$

5. anonymous

https://www.desmos.com/calculator this is a link to a graphing calculator if you need it

6. Mirandaregina

@mastermindkakashi I got tan(6/8) = 0.1309 I don't know if my answer is right or not, though, considering the answer choices are A) 41.1 degrees B) 28.3 degrees C) 45 degrees D) 36.8 degrees

7. anonymous

hm well I got a different answer than you... what do you think it is? I think we can solve it a different way

8. anonymous

okay so if you look at it by pythagorean theorem, the missing side is 10. so your triangle now looks like this |dw:1435612732862:dw| and you can think of it as a perfect right triangle, which has 45-45-90 angles

9. Mirandaregina

@mastermindkakashi yeah, I actually got that by solving r = √x^2 + y^2 earlier, I just don't know how to use this info to find theta

10. anonymous

I think it is 45 degrees because it forms a perfect triangle

11. Mirandaregina

@mastermindkakashi ahhhh that makes sense! haha thank you for your help!

12. anonymous

no problem! :D @Mirandaregina