Hmm... Do I sense some... confusion here? One side is saying it's the tangent, the other it's the sine. Which one is which???
I don't know, but I sense that sine may make more sense at least for roads anyways because one can measure the distance of a road that is climbing (the hypotenuse) and then find out how much one "climbed" (height) in doing so. Therefore, that climb over the measured distance traveled would provide a value that can interpreted as % (dimensionally, the unit 1: distance/distance).
But if I read opinions here right it seems (again...) that Europe would use sine whereas America would use tangent? Is this a fair interpretation?
Marcus
On Fri, 7 Feb 2003 18:02:55 Terry Simpson wrote:
Ma Be wrote:say an angle in the first quadrant has the horizontal distance of 1 meter and the height was say 5 cm, would this carachterize a 5% gradient angle?For UK roads the answer is no.It is distance travelled (hypotenuse rather than horizontal) and vertical>rise. I am sure the same applies throughout Europe.
If you are working from maps you should use tangents. If you are working on the ground use sines.
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Joseph B. Reid
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