Why 360°?

Saturday, October 3, 2009
Why 360° Degrees

Hello to rooms 9-05 and 9-06,

Today the question I am answering is why 360° Degrees? Why not another number you ask? Well the answer to that question is very simple.


The main reasons for choosing the number 360 are


The Babylonians created their number system called the sexagesmal number system. Which uses
a base of 60 instead of what we use now, which is a base of 10.



Another reason for picking the number 360 is that it have many divisors, actually it has 24. They are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30, 36, 40, 45, 60, 72, 90, 120, 180, and 360. including 1 and its self. They chose this number because they thought if it had a lot divisors then it would work, instead of using a base of 10 which only has 4.(1,2,5,10)



360 is also a good number to divide a circle into equal parts which why it was picked. If you look around theirs a lot of example of 360, Time: 60 min. in a hour, the one everyone knows the best, the calender: which had 360 days in a year, where the earth would rotate around the sun
. Making one full year. But before we added 5 for days to the calender so we could be more accurate, the Babylonians stayed with 360.


That is why I think the number 360 was chosen. Thanks for reading my explanation on why 360 was picked!
Please leave comments, because nobody can be perfect.

2 comments:

melanie905 said...

Haha, "nobody can be perfect." Well anyways, great job (; Good explanation, and nice pictures. I liked your use of font colours. It makes everything stand out, plus it makes it more pretty. (like how Mr.H described them last year) Keep up the great work Brendan!

xtian 9-05 said...

Great job Brendan i liked your pictures and explanations.

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