How do you simplify (1cosθ)(1+cosθ)?

2 Answers

It is

(1cosθ)(1+cosθ)=1cos2θ=sin2θ=|sinθ|

where || is the absolute value.

We used the fact that sin2θ+cos2θ=1

Jul 23, 2016

(1cosθ)(1+cosθ)=|sinθ|

Explanation:

For this problem, we can use the difference of squares methods, which tells us that

(ab)(a+b)=a2b2

Applying this method, we then get

(1cosθ)(1+cosθ)=1cos2θ

Also note that sin2θ+cos2θ=1sin2θ=1cos2θ

Thus we can simplify this even further, giving us

1cos2θ=sin2θ

We have to be careful here, because the root implies that we should have to answers. In fact, if we would have made the mistake of saying that sin2θ=sinx, we would have the following graphs:

Graph of sin2θ:
graph{sqrt(sin x * sinx) [-5.504, 5.596, -2.153, 3.396]}
Graph of sinθ:
graph{sin x [-5.504, 5.596, -2.153, 3.396]}

These functions are noticeably different, but they're only off by a little bit. In this problem, we could say that

(1cosθ)(1+cosθ)

=sin2θ=sinθ and sinθ|sinθ|