Why are there 360º in a circle?

You can count to six with one hand.

Clever people can count as far as 31 on one hand ;-)


When I show my kids that, they double over laughing when I get to four.

:-(

What about 390 on two hands...?

m wrote:
Hello!,
I know this is probably a silly question for you,
but why are there 360º in a circle?, has it anything
to do with astronomy?

Probably it was just an arbitrary pick, but it does
make it easy to divide a circle evenly by a wide
variety of integers.

"Peter Sheppard" wrote in message
...
You can count to six with one hand.

Clever people can count as far as 31 on one hand ;-)


When I show my kids that, they double over laughing when I get to four.

:-(

What about 390 on two hands...?

I am never so vulgar - or at least aggressive.
(it hurts my fingers)

--
Jeff R.
(and let's not mention 11-bit bytes)

JRS: In article .com
, dated Mon, 3 Jul 2006 09:19:38 remote, seen in news:uk.sci.astronomy,
m posted :
I know this is probably a silly question for you,
but why are there 360º in a circle?, has it anything
to do with astronomy?

It is ascribed by Peter Kemp to Pythagoras; and by Norman Feather to
Ptolemy of Alexandria.

NF says that the early Chinese had 365 1/4 degrees in a circle - an
obvious astronomical link. The Chaldeans used sexagesimal arithmetic,
and thus 360 is a reasonable rationalisation; probably 0.1 deg would
have been inconveniently small.

It ties in with the Babylonian division of the day.

--
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