Who uses trigonometry?
This question has been used by many students when they are trying to argue to their parents that their math class "isn't important". "Who uses this stuff anyway?" they might say and in fact, there are many instances of Trigonometry use throughout the world. One use of trig is in the military. With planes dropping bombs or with artillery shooting down planes, there are equations. If you could freeze frame an action scene in a war battle, you could draw a triangle connecting the plane to the ground and then to the artillery equipment. When artillery and airplanes with bombs were first used in the military, they pilots of the equipment would have to do all of the calculations in the air and in the heat of battle. They would use trigonometry to find the angle of depression and to calculate the distance so that when they drop the bomb, it would hit right on target. Now, since technology has been upgraded so much, the machine does all of those calculations on the spot and it takes no more than a split second. But the military is full of jobs that use trig to calculate direction and distance.

When looking at the grade of a road, it becomes apparent that it resembles a trig function. The Grade of a road is exactly like the slope, just put in different proportions. if a road has a 10% grade, you might not think much of it especially when in a car but in reality, a 10% grade is a rather steep road. To find the grade of a road, you have to take the rise over the run and multiply it by 100. So this means that a 10% grade would be rising 1 foot for every 10 feet traveled. Still doesn't seem like much right? Well most hills around Albuquerque do not exceed a 6% grade. So what does this mean for the roads themselves? Is getting a 100% no longer what is strived for? If a road had a grade of 100% it would be at a 45 degree angle to the ground. This would be nearly impossible to drive up. This can tie back into our last discussion about uninformed students. This can cause for confusion especially with kids. They might ask their parents, "Mommy, why does this road have such a bad grade? a 6% is terrible, what did it do?" The explanation of this to a little kid would be very difficult, which would cause anger in the parent, thus creating a tumbling ball of frustration! haha This is yet another example of when math can be applied to the real world.