Lesson 5

The goal of this lesson is for students to bring together what they have learned so far in this unit about points on a unit circle, right triangles, and trigonometry to establish the Pythagorean Identity. Students will continue this work in the following lesson.

In a previous lesson, students concluded that for any point \(B\) in the first quadrant whose distance from the origin is 1 unit, the coordinates \((x,y)\) of the point can be written as the cosine and sine of the radian angle corresponding to point \(B\).

In this lesson, students first recall the connection between the coordinates of \(B\) and values of cosine and sine. Next, students expand this understanding to the other quadrants, viewing cosine and sine as coordinates of a point on the unit circle rather than as lengths of right triangle sides. This is an important transition step as students progress toward thinking about cosine and sine, and later, tangent, as functions.

Building from the equation of a circle and the coordinates for any point on the unit circle, such as \((\cos(\theta),\sin(\theta))\) for point \(D\), leads to establishing the Pythagorean Identity, written as \(\cos^2(\theta) + \sin^2(\theta) = 1\). Students reason about why the equation is an identity by drawing in right triangles for specific cases and then generalizing for any angle, using the equation of the unit circle (MP8).

The notation for squaring cosine and sine is introduced in this lesson as \(\cos^2(\theta)\) and \(\sin^2(\theta)\) so students do not, for example, confuse \(\sin^2(\theta)\) with \(\sin(\theta^2)\).