Why do we use knots as a speed measurement unit for air and water travel?
In: Engineering
Nowadays mostly for historical reasons. Converting everything to metric would require changing a ton of infrastructure.
Why nautical miles and knots were defined differently from land miles: 1 nautical mile is 1 minute of equatorial latitude, so it’s very handy for estimating distances, travel times, etc. from coordinates without any computing tools other than your brain. Vital for seafarers well into mid-20th century and still used as backup nowadays, GPS navigation is very recent and can be disrupted.
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