Dear Marcus and All, Thank you for your kind thoughts. I have interspersed some remarks.
> Not to detract from Pat's proposal here which is a very worthy one, please, > allow me to make one additional comment that may unfortunately play somewhat > against it. Please see more on it below. > > On Wed, 26 Jun 2002 09:44:59 > Pat Naughtin wrote: >> Dear Marcus, Joe, and All, > ... >> To begin, I would like to state that I agree with Marcus that it is timely >> to discuss the issue of plane angle measurement. However I differ from >> Marcus in that I favor dividing a circle into four 'quads' (right angles) >> each of which I divide by 1000 into milliquads. >> ... > Thanks, Pat, BTW, for your show of support (again...). > > Another side issue that just occurred to me has to do with the potential > fix-up of the time framework, too. Given that decimalization of time would > most surely be based on a... "perfect" decimal multiple and that there is a > clear connection between a circle and time (time zones around the globe) Let's take one thing at a time (tee hee). I disagree that we should maintain the nexus between angle and time. This connection has now outlived its worthlessness. The connection between angle and time has inhibited progress in the measurement of both angle and time � now is the time (more tee hee) to separate the two so that we can move forward. > it > probably should behoove us to consider a proposal that would take the entire > circle as that decimal multiple (and NOT '4' sections, as Pat proposes). One obviously good way to break the nexus between angle and time would be to choose the right angle as the SI base unit of plane angle and leave the circle to the time and calendar folk. As a side issue here we could consider the practicalities of introducing a circle into (say) the building industry by telling all of the trades that a circle is an angle. This will take some time. Noting that the radian has already failed to become a popular unit of plane angle � with the continued use of Babylonian units � I believe that an angle that looked like an angle would have more success. A right angle looks like an angle, while a circle does not look like an angle. On the other hand a circle looks like a circle and I know that it would take a long time and a lot of education to convince building workers (and the general population) that a circle is an angle. > The tie-up to this approach would clearly be beneficial for aviation, > geographers, surveyors, etc, in the long run. Marcus, could you elaborate on these advantages. I do not have any experience in aviation so I cannot see any advantages of tying angle and time together. My suspicion is that because the connection between angle and time has prevented development in either, we have simply retained the Babylonian measure because it is too difficult to change two things at once. When you try to reform time the angle folk squeal, and if you decide to try reform of angle the time folk scream. Either way, it is probably possible to reform one thing at a time if you can break the connection. > On the other hand, it also > occurred to me that the circumference of the earth is a figure close to 40 Mm > (which evidently would favor Pat's proposal). Put more succinctly; the quadrant of the Earth is close to 10�Mm. > But given the fact that it's > not "exact", this "connection" may be less important. The error is sleight; the value is close enough for almost all purposes. As we can quite comfortably say that a litre of water has a mass of a kilogram, so we can say that it is 10 megametres from the equator to the North or South Pole. > One other potentially interesting proposal could be for us to consider a > binary multiple of 10 for the number of hours in a day, as opposed to 24. > True we would wreak just as much havoc and I'm not sure tolerating binary > conversion factors would be much better than our current systems for angles > and time, but... As noted above I regard time as a separate issue here. I will not comment. Instead I will confine my remarks to plane angles. > I mean... These are just ideas I'm throwing at you, folks, for further > consideration. My mind is not made up yet, I'm just exploring the > possibilities and trying to evaluate this from all possible angles here... At > the end of the day though we must unequivocally reach a rational, logical, > reasonable conclusion as to what approach should prevail, fair?... > > Marcus
