Freebase Dali

College. Intro to Physics. I'm supposed to be studying right now, but since I have absolutely no background in trig, some steps are a bit "wut". I know how to identify the sides of a right triangle, so that's a check.
I know "soh cah toa" now, so that's also a check.

Unfortunately, I've forgotten (or never got to the point where I understood) what exactly I'm using sine, cosine, tangent, and the inverses for.

I understand that sin = o/h, and cos = a/h, and tan = o/a. Check. But if I have a right triangle and wish to find a side that isn't theta, am I supposed to be solving for one of the variables in o/h, a/h, or o/a? I assume I am, seeing as how if you already have 2 sides, you get the third with P. Theorem.

Now help me put this in perspective. Let's say I have a right triangle whose angle is 20 degrees, and whose opposite side is 10 units. To solve for the adjacent side, I assume I would use the tangent function. So that would be 10/A (where A is the variable of the adjacent side), times the tangent of 20 degrees. Right?

So where do I go from here? I can't rightly multiply a fraction with a variable as the denominator, so do I multiply both sides by the denominator to end up with just 10, and multiply 10 times the tangent of 20 degrees? I would end up with roughly 3.63 as the value of the adjacent side.
Is this correct?

Let me know.


MORE TO COME. for real.

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