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Expanding powers of cosine

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg84184] Expanding powers of cosine
• From: michael.p.croucher at googlemail.com
• Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:02:45 -0500 (EST)

Hi

I would like to express even powers of Cos[x] in terms of powers of
Sin[x] using the identity Sin[x]^2+Cos[x]^2 = 1.  For example

Cos[x]^4 = 1 - 2 Sin[x]^2 + Sin[x]^4

I could not get any of Mathematica's built in functions to do this for
me so I created my own rule:

expandCosn[z_] := Module[{s, res},
  s = Cos[x]^n_ :> (1 - Sin[x]^2) Cos[x]^(n - 2) ;
  res = z //. s;
  Expand[res]
  ]

which works fine:

In[14]:= expandCosn[Cos[x]^4]

Out[14]= 1 - 2 Sin[x]^2 + Sin[x]^4

My question is - have I missed something?  Is there an easier way to
do this?

Cheers,
Mike

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Expanding powers of cosine
    • From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz@mimuw.edu.pl>