The other variant was actually meant to read sin(a)/1 to highlight the ratio in both cases but I abandoned that halfway through because I thought it makes the h

The other variant was actually meant to read sin(a)/1 to highlight the ratio in both cases but I abandoned that halfway through because I thought it makes the hypotenuse look special while it really is not in the sin(a)/cos(a) variant where the more natural description would be tan(a)/1 but that kind of ruins the simple association with the side lengths of a right triangle. I had another idea how to formulate it that would not favor one of the variants but as far as I can tell the necessary distinction between the two catheti that exists in German does not exist in English and so I left it as it is.