So we’re doing trigonometric integrals in calculus and one of our homework problems is this little dude:

We rushed through this section of the chapter this morning ’cause we’re behind schedule and I’m a little shaky on them (also I’m dumb), so I went to the calc room in Polya to get some help. I showed one of the tutors in there this integral.

I told him how I thought we should start: since (1-cos2x) is the numerator of the half-angle formula for sin²x, we could multiply both sides of the half-angle formula to change (1-cos2x) to 2sin²x and then go from there.

He said he’d never even thought about solving it like that, but when I asked him what the “normal” method would be for this integral, he didn’t know.

So is there another way of solving this?