cabbagehead
|
None. If you keep getting 0s on your exams, you'll never get a degree. :)
There are 360 degrees in a circle. In fact, a degree is defined as 1/360 of a full rotation: if a skateboarder does a "360," they spin in the air just enough to be facing the same way they started.
Why 360? The degree we used today invented by Babylonian astronomers, and 360 was a practical number for them for two reasons:
1. They thought there were 360 days in a year, and made star charts based on one degree movement per day.
2. It was easy to measure. These astronomers used chords for measurement: they would run a string from the center of the circle to two points on the line to create a triangle. A chord with equal sides, each the length of the radius, would cover one sixth of a circle. The Babylonians used a sexagesimal (base 60) numbering system, so they divided this chord into sixty parts, making each one a degree. Six chords with sixty degrees in each totals 360.
Later mathematicians kept the degree because it's easily divisible: half a circle is 180 degrees, a quarter of a circle is 90 degrees, and so on.
 Posted 5215 day ago
|