Tangent Is a Slope, Not a Wave

You'll learnto understand tangent as the slope of the terminal ray.

Sine and cosine are coordinates. Tangent is their quotient, which makes it the slope of the terminal ray, and that one sentence explains everything that makes tangent behave unlike its two parents. Twelve short steps; press Next for each one.

12 STEPS · 6 QUICK CHECKS · SLOPE · PERIOD π · ASYMPTOTES · NO AMPLITUDE · v3

tangent is a slope, so it is not a wave at all

Before you start

What you're looking at

A ray on the unit circle, and an empty pair of axes waiting beside it.

The question

As the ray swings toward vertical, what happens to how steep it is?

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