'

Search results

Found 423 matches
Half-Life

Half-life is the amount of time required for the amount of something to fall to half its initial value. The term is very commonly used in nuclear physics ... more

Lotka's Law

Lotka’s law, named after Alfred J. Lotka, is one of a variety of special applications of Zipf’s law. It describes the frequency of publication ... more

Precession (Torque-free)

Precession is a change in the orientation of the rotational axis of a rotating body. In an appropriate reference frame it can be defined as a change in the ... more

Gravity measurement with seconds pendulum (Kater's pendulum))

A seconds pendulum is a pendulum whose period is precisely two seconds; one second for a swing in one direction and one second for the return swing, a ... more

Worksheet 334

In a video game design, a map shows the location of other characters relative to the player, who is situated at the origin, and the direction they are facing. A character currently shows on the map at coordinates (-3, 5). If the player rotates counterclockwise by 20 degrees, then the objects in the map will correspondingly rotate 20 degrees clockwise. Find the new coordinates of the character.

To rotate the position of the character, we can imagine it as a point on a circle, and we will change the angle of the point by 20 degrees. To do so, we first need to find the radius of this circle and the original angle.

Drawing a right triangle inside the circle, we can find the radius using the Pythagorean Theorem:

Pythagorean theorem (right triangle)

To find the angle, we need to decide first if we are going to find the acute angle of the triangle, the reference angle, or if we are going to find the angle measured in standard position. While either approach will work, in this case we will do the latter. By applying the cosine function and using our given information we get

Cosine function
Subtraction

While there are two angles that have this cosine value, the angle of 120.964 degrees is in the second quadrant as desired, so it is the angle we were looking for.

Rotating the point clockwise by 20 degrees, the angle of the point will decrease to 100.964 degrees. We can then evaluate the coordinates of the rotated point

For x axis:

Cosine function

For y axis:

Sine function

The coordinates of the character on the rotated map will be (-1.109, 5.725)

Reference : PreCalculus: An Investigation of Functions,Edition 1.4 © 2014 David Lippman and Melonie Rasmussen
http://www.opentextbookstore.com/precalc/
Creative Commons License : http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/

Spirograph (rotation angle of the inner circle)

Spirograph is a geometric drawing toy that produces mathematical roulette curves of the variety technically known as hypotrochoids and epitrochoids.
A ... more

Rule of 70 ( estimating the time for money's buying power to halve)

Purchasing power (sometimes retroactively called adjusted for inflation) is the number of goods or services that can be purchased with a unit of currency. ... more

Compound annual growth rate

Compound annual growth rate is a business and investing specific term for the geometric progression ratio that provides a constant rate of return over the ... more

Tractive Force

As used in mechanical engineering, the term tractive force can either refer to the total traction a vehicle exerts on a surface, or the amount of the total ... more

Arithmetic Mean Return

Compound annual growth rate is a business and investing specific term for the geometric progression ratio that provides a constant rate of return over the ... more

...can't find what you're looking for?

Create a new formula