Why 360°?

Monday, October 5, 2009
360°

Have you ever thought about why a circle has 360 degrees? Well there was a group of people called the Babylonians. While we use 10 nowadays I bet your wondering what they use. Well The Babylonians used a number system with the base number of 60. The number system is called the sexagesimal system. The Babylonians learned that the earth rotates about 1 degree per day. Their calendar had 360 days, which is pretty close to 365 (our calendar). The reason they chose 360 was so they could track the time of year. They were 5.25 days off, but they were close.


A full circle is 360°. It is broken up into 60 parts. One part would be 1/60.

One of the cool things about 360 is that it is divisible by 24 numbers. 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.
That makes it a lot easier to work with.

I hope you learned a bit from this. Comment if you want.

2 comments:

melanie905 said...

Good job Vikram! Nice explanations, and I liked your picture. I also like how you used some colours in your font, but I still think you should add a little more information. But overall, great post!

Lissa 9-05 said...

Good job Vikram! I like how you bolded your and coloured some words. Keep up the great work!

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