Thanks, Pat, for your show of support here. As I said before I wouldn't have much squabbling about your "quad" proposal, i.e. I could go along with it if a consensus is reached in that direction. I just feel that this issue should be very carefully studied and mainly by ALL segments of society that would be *directly* affected by a decision in this area, like aviators, mathematicians, metrologists, etc.
Marcus On Tue, 25 Jun 2002 06:47:26 Pat Naughtin wrote: >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. > > Is your boss reading your email? ....Probably Keep your messages private by using Lycos Mail. Sign up today at http://mail.lycos.com
