A Level Maths Notes for C2: Quadratic Trigonometry

Trigonometry often reduces to quadratic equations using one of the formulae:

For example, to solve , we look at the formulae: the second one substitutes . We obtain We take . from each side to get . for

This factorises to give

Either

or

We may have to use the quadratic formula instead of factorising. For example, . As before we use the second formula above, obtaining, This doesn't factorise, but we can find solutions by substituting to get quadratic formula to find p thence x.
More info
Web search

and solving this with the

Sometimes the equation we arrive at doesn't look like a quadratic. For example,

. For this we use the last of the five formulae above, to get . Subtract from both sides to get . is a common factor so we can factorise to get Either or . Finally, there may be equations that are not actually quadratic, but still require manipulation. . Divide both sides by : .

A Level Maths Notes: C2 Binomial Expansion

We can use the binomial theorem to expand and simplify expressions of the form where n is any positive whole number. The general expansions is

Example:

We evaluate the coefficient of each power of

and simplify:

Example:

which simplifies to

then

Suppose we have an expansion. We know and but not n. If we have a relationship between the coefficients we may be able to form an equation to find n. Suppose in the expansion below we know that the coefficient of coefficient of equals the

The coefficient of

is

The coefficient of
More info
Web search

is

Equate these:

Now cancel where possible