Right angle Right angle In geometry and trigonometry, a right angle is an angle of exactly 90° (degrees), corresponding to a quarter turn. If a ray is placed so that its endpoint is on a line and the adjacent angles are equal, then they are right angles. The term is a calque of Latin "angulus rectus"; here "rectus" means "upright", referring to the vertical perpendicular to a horizontal base line. Closely related and important geometrical concepts are perpendicular lines, meaning lines that form right angles at their point of intersection, and orthogonality, which is the property of forming right angles, usually applied
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