Complicated Cosines Guesswork

Level pending

DO NOT USE A CALCULATOR FOR THIS PROBLEM!

Given that sin 7 = 0.122 \sin {7^{\circ}}=0.122 , find arccos 0.359 \arccos {0.359} to the nearest degree.

All values are rounded to the nearest thousandths in this problem.


The answer is 69.

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1 solution

Tristan Shin
Jan 3, 2014

This problem requires some guesswork, but it mainly comes down to applying the double and triple angle formulas.

Double and Triple Angle Formulas:

sin 2 a = 2 sin a cos a \sin {2a}=2\sin {a}\cos {a}

sin 3 a = 3 sin a 4 sin 3 a \sin {3a}=3\sin {a}-4\sin^{3} {a}

Here's the work:

sin 7 = 0.122 \sin {7}=0.122

cos 7 = 1 sin 2 7 \cos {7}=\sqrt {1-\sin^{2} {7}}

cos 7 \cos {7} comes close to 1. None of those are near 0.359.

sin 14 \sin {14} gets close to 0.244 and cos 14 \cos {14} gets close to 1 also. Still not close to 0.359...

3 sin 7 = 0.366 3\sin {7}=0.366

sin 3 7 = 0.12 2 3 = 0.001815948 \sin^{3} {7}=0.122^{3}=0.001815948

4 sin 3 7 = 0.007263792 4\sin^{3} {7}=0.007263792

sin 21 = 0.359 \sin {21}=0.359

cos 69 = 0.359 \cos {69}=0.359

arccos 0.359 = 69 \arccos {0.359}=69

Finally! We found arccos 0.359 \arccos {0.359} !

Therefore, the answer is 69 \boxed {69}

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