How Is Trigonometry Used In The Real World

641 Words3 Pages

The Study of Distances – Parallax

How is trigonometry used in the real world? Trigonometry is actually very significant in the real world, as there are various different real life applications of trigonometry, especially in astronomy. Trigonometric parallax can be used to measure the distance between two objects. Parallax, in general, is the way that objects appear to be moving when they are viewed from different positions. For example, if someone looks out of a window in a moving vehicle, trees that are close by will appear to move much faster than mountains that are far away.

Trigonometric parallax is used in astronomy to measure the distance of something that is beyond the reach of measuring instruments, like nearby stars. As the distance …show more content…

The distance between these two points is called the baseline. To find the distance from the earth to another star, the baseline has to be the Earth’s orbit because otherwise, the parallax angle would be extremely small. The distance between the sun and the Earth is 149.6 million kilometers, which is equivalent to 1 AU. This distance is also known as the baseline, which can then be used to find the distance from the sun to the nearby star (if the parallax angle is given).

If it the unknown angle created by the Earth and the nearby star is given in arc seconds, which are extremely small angular measurements that need to be converted to degrees. For example, if the unknown angle is 2 arc seconds, the degree of the angle can be identified given that one degree is equal to 3,600 arc seconds (or one arc hour).

Now that the degree of this angle has been found, it has to be divided by two in order to find the parallax angle.

Now that an angle of the triangle (other than the right angle) has been found, basic trigonometry can be applied to this situation. For this specific example, the trigonometric function, tangent, can be