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noun

cosine

ratio of the adjacent side to the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle

In a sentence

Six example sentences with cosine, each labelled with its topic.

  • Game engines compute the cosine of the angle between two vectors to decide how brightly a surface should be lit.

    Technology

  • Surveyors multiply the slope length by its cosine to recover the true horizontal distance across a sloping building site.

    Architecture

  • A wide lens dims the frame corners because illumination falls with the cosine of the tilt away from center.

    Photography

  • The work done by a force equals its size times the distance moved times the cosine of the angle between them.

    Science

  • A pure tone traced on an oscilloscope is a cosine wave, and every richer sound is a stack of them.

    Music

  • A solar panel's output falls with the cosine of the sun's angle, so a fixed roof array loses power in early morning.

    Environment

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