Saturday, 13 December 2014

dimensional analysis - how to find the dimensions of a variable inside an angle



Take this equation v2=2asin(2πbt) where v is a velocity and t is a time. Find the dimensions of a and b.



Finding the dimensions of a is easy as the sin has no dimension so it will have the same dimensions as v2.


But the problem is finding the dimensions of b because the sin takes an angle as a parameter, and angles have no dimension we can simply say that b should be 1/[T] which will make the entire argument dimensionless. But isn't that just wrong?


Because there are some physical laws that have sin(t) for example where t is a time, so it isn't a condition that the angle's value should be dimensionless.


This is really confusing.



Answer



The arguments of trigonometric functions in physical equation have always to be dimensionless because the argument is a pure number. Therefore you are correct that the dimension of b has to be [1/T].


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