Hi Dan, Don't worry, 60 is well represented in time and angular measurements. We have 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute, 6 x 60 degrees in a circle and again 60 minutes in a degree and sixty seconds in a minute. Why? Being highly divisible is only part of the story. Other parts include our year of 365.25 days, very close to 360 and six equilateral triangles in a circle indicating that pi was close to 3 but greater as the arc is longer that the cord. If a circle is 360, equilateral triangles are 60 and a quadrant is 90. My preference for angular measurement is degrees and decimal minutes as opposed to degrees, minutes seconds or decimal degrees, From navigation experience, I recognize a minute of latitude is a nautical mile. I can easily handle decimal miles. I hate grads using 100 rather that 90 in a quadrant. Some French topo maps still use the Paris meridian for longitude and grads for latitudes. This is as ridiculous as republican time, 10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in a hour and 100 minutes in an hour. Get over it as the French did with time. The Babylonians were onto something when they defined our base 60 units of measurement.
Regards, Roger Bailey From: Dan Uza Sent: Monday, July 27, 2015 2:59 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Precision: the measure of all things Hi everyone, If you haven't already, you might want to check out the first part of the documentary "Precision: the measure of all things". It's about the measurement of time and length, featuring the topic of sundials. There's an interesting theory about how the day got split into 12 hours because this number is highly divisible (but why not 60?). I just watched it on Da Vinci Learning. Dan Uza Romania -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2015.0.6081 / Virus Database: 4392/10318 - Release Date: 07/27/15
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