transcendental zeros function



I have a problem that will need to find roots of transcendental
problems.  A simple example would be f(s)=sinh(s)*sin(s).  Since I am
search on the range s>0, sinh(s) will never =0 and it makes things
numerically very messy.  Is there a Maxima function (or would it be
easy to write a simple one), that could look at an expression and for
a range of an input values know which terms will never be 0 and factor
them out for the sake of easier root searching?  These functions will
have many parameters, but only one independent variable (a better
example might be L^2/beta*sinh(beta)*sin(beta) where
beta=(w^2*m*L^4/EI)^0.25, the roots of which are the natural
frequencies of a pinned-pinned beam in free vibration and w is the
independent variable).

Thanks for your thoughts,

Ryan