Dear Marcus and All, I agree with Marcus that there is a need to rethink the very first metric quantity - plane angles.
I think that some mathematicians of the past went feral on this issue, and in promoting radians as a pure number (and therefore a suitable unit for plane angle) threw out the baby with the bath water. In essence they threw out the right angle that has been the basis of many (most) people's understanding of what an angle is. This has left people such as builders without an SI unit for angle and has left them using the Babylonian measures of degrees, minutes, and seconds. I favor an SI unit based on a right angle (which I have tentatively called a quad) that is then divided into thousands (i.e. milliquads). Cheers, Pat Naughtin CAMS Geelong, Australia > I cannot fathom for the love of me why we still haven't dealt with this issue > yet. If we all agree with a decimal system of units we should also all agree > that decimalization of angles should be "in the agenda" of things to do (just > like with time!). Now... Why don't we "change slightly" the subject of these > discussions to what solution we should support? As far as I'm concerned there > can only be 4 reasonable options here: either go with 100 or 1000 for a unit > or 1 or 4 for the entire circle. My vote goes to 100 for the entire circle > due mainly to its "tie" with percentages.
