Central angle intersection points and of the legs of the angle with the circle form a diameter, then is a straight angle. (In radians, .) Let be the minor arc of the circle between points and , and let be the radius of the circle. If the central angle is subtended by , then If the central angle is not subtended by the minor arc , then is a reflex angle and If a tangent at and a tangent at intersect at the exterior point , then denoting the center as , the angles (convex) and are supplementary (sum to 180°). A
Small-angle approximation approximately 60 degrees. The formulas for addition and subtraction involving a small angle may be used for interpolating between trigonometric table values: Example: sin(0.755) Small-angle approximation The small-angle approximation is a useful simplification of the basic trigonometric functions which is approximately true in the limit where the angle approaches zero. They are truncations of the Taylor series for the basic trigonometric functions to a second-order approximation. This truncation gives: where is the angle in radians. The small angle approximation is useful in many areas of engineering and physics, including mechanics, electromagnetics, optics (where it forms the basis of the paraxial