Memorization for Physics/Engineering

[phrontist]

Originally Posted by Karthik

I've been a TA for first year Calculus for four years now. When in comes to Trig, there's very little that you actually have to memorize. Here's the musts.

• Your friendly triangles -- (1,1, root 2) & (1, root 3, 2)
• Your basic trigonometric ratios -- SOH-CAH-TOA, and the reciprocals
  • From these first two, you know calculate the values of any basic angles
• (Sin x)^2 + (Cos x)^2 =1

With a working knowledge of elementary geometry, you can derive everything else you'll ever need. But if you don't want to be doing that during a test, here's the next level of stuff you'll want to committ to memory.

• The double angle formulae for Sin and Cos
  • With the double angle formulae, you can now get radical expressions for things as complicated as Sin 1

I'm a firm believer that when it comes to math, you really don't need to memorize. I tend to derive pretty much everything on the fly. I've found that this style of learning and doing, allows for a much more fluent application of the knowledge. Math means so much more, when you know where all you formulas are coming from.


There are hundreds of trig identities you could memorize, but you'll save yourself a lot of time if you just learn how to derive them.

Thanks Karthik! Exactly the kind of info I was looking for. I agree though that trig identities shouldn't be memorized instead of knowing how to derive them, rather that they should be memorized to increase speed.