These types of problems aren’t limited to airplanes, though. Have you ever gone in a boat and drifted off course? Here’s what was happening from a physics point of view:


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2 Responses to “Boat Problem”

  1. The two ones are: sine and cosine. Tangent is built on these, and the inverse is used when you need to find out information about the thing you’re taking the trig function of, like the angle. It’s akin to dividing both sides in order to solve for “x” in algebra.

  2. Starting from about 3:13, you use the inverse tangent to find the resultant force. What is the reason behind using the inverse tangent instead of another function like tan, sin, cos, etc. ?