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Math Forum » Discussions » Math Topics » geometry.pre-college.independent

Topic: Why 360 degrees?
Replies: 13   Last Post: Mar 20, 1998 9:56 AM

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Lynn Stallings

Posts: 5
Registered: 12/6/04
Re: Why 360 degrees?
Posted: Apr 28, 1995 1:50 PM
  Click to see the message monospaced in plain text Plain Text   Click to reply to this topic Reply

I've heard it suggested that it had to do with the fact that a year was
thought to consist of 360 days.

At 5:50 PM 4/28/95 +0000, Joe Seeley wrote:
>When did ancient geometers come up with the idea of dividing the circle into
>360 degrees, and why?
>
>My guess for the reason is that 360 is evenly divisible by so many integers,
>making some calculations easy.
>
>-=-=-
>Joseph Seeley | seeley@cerl.uiuc.edu | Champaign, Illinois
> | joe-uci@nova.novanet.org |
> | co-editor of FootNotes |

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