Where did 360 degrees came from? Why is it 360 and not another number?
In: Mathematics
Worth noting that the natural unit for angle is the Radian. This is the angle you get if you trace out one radius of length along the arc of the circle. It’s about 57°
Problem with the radian is that it generally involves using fractions of a radian in our calculations. That’s a hassle we’d rather avoid if we can.
So we do. We create some number that represents a full circle, and divide that up accordingly.
If we think smart, we want a number that is
1. sufficiently large that even small angles are likely to be integers
2. capable of being evenly divided by the most numbers
You can go through and find the number of factors any given number has, but 360 is about as good as it’s going to get.
You’ve got:
1,2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,12,15,18
And that’s just the first 5% of numbers out of 360.
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