Tuesday, January 24, 2017

When solving an SSA triangle, you could possible have 0,1 or 2 triangles

Suppose in triangle ABC, you know side a = 10, b = 16 and angle A is 30 degrees

By the law of sines, 

SinB/16 = Sin30/10

10*sinB = (1/2)!6

SinB = 0.8, therefore B = 53.1 degrees. But sine is also positive in the second quadrant, so there is a possible second triangle with B = 126.9 degrees. This can work because C would equal 23.1 degrees in this triangle and C = 96.9 in the first triangle

If angle A was 60 degrees and B came out to 53.1 or 126.9 then only 1 triangle exists since (126.9 + 60 = 186.9) angle C + angle A > 180.

If you try to solve for an angle an get Sin > 1 or < -1 then there are no solutions.

No comments:

Post a Comment