Eli5: Why are circles specifically 360 degrees and not 100?
In: Mathematics
The ancient Babylonian calendar said that there are 12 months of 30 days, and thus 360 days in a year (which got periodically adjusted by big-ass leap years to make up for the 5.25 missing days). This was based on their understanding of astronomy and charted by the movement of constellations.
in ~200 BC the Greek astronomer Hipparchos of Rhodes was studying ancient Babylonian astronomy and needed to do some angular calculations, as astronomers very often do. Since the Babylonian constellations where assumed to move through 360 days, Hipparchos divided a circle into 360 parts, and the concept of the 360-degree circle was born.
We kept this system because it’s actually pretty good, since 360 can be evenly divided very many ways, though these days radians are in more common use because they’re even better.
But it all comes from ancient Greeks studying a fucked-up calendar that was considered ancient by the ancient Greeks.
Latest Answers