“An Introduction to Hyperbolic Functions in Elementary Calculus” Jerome Rosenthal, Broward Community College, Pompano Beach, FL 33063 Mathematics Teacher, April 1986, Volume 79, Number 4, pp. 298–300. Mathematics Teacher is a publication of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). The primary purpose of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics is to provide vision and leadership in the improvement of the teaching and learning of mathematics. For more information on membership in the NCTM, call or write: NCTM Headquarters Office 1906 Association Drive Reston, Virginia 20191-9988 Phone: (703) 620-9840 Fax: (703) 476-2970 Internet: http://www.nctm.org E-mail:
[email protected] Article reprint with permission from Mathematics Teacher, copyright April 1986 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. All rights reserved. he customary introduction to hyperbolic functions mentions that the combinations T s1y2dseu 1 e2ud and s1y2dseu 2 e2ud occur with sufficient frequency to warrant special names. These functions are analogous, respectively, to cos u and sin u. This article attempts to give a geometric justification for cosh and sinh, comparable to the functions of sin and cos as applied to the unit circle. This article describes a means of identifying cosh u 5 s1y2dseu 1 e2ud and sinh u 5 s1y2dseu 2 e2ud with the coordinates of a point sx, yd on a comparable “unit hyperbola,” x2 2 y2 5 1. The functions cosh u and sinh u are the basic hyperbolic functions, and their relationship to the so-called unit hyperbola is our present concern. The basic hyperbolic functions should be presented to the student with some rationale.