? Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding on your part, my dear colleague. What I meant is the use of rad as an *angle* as in:
pi over 4 for 45 degrees, which would translate into an intractable number. Clearly calling an angle 50 grades would be much more useful and practical than some 0.875... (approximate!). But I have an observation to make on your argumentation, if you allow me, please. Why develop a scale (mil) that would be "binary" in nature (64)??? Why not stick with a TRULY decimal system for angles? (Ifp thinking at play here???... ;-) ) The way I see it is simple. Either one chooses the grade as the decimal scale (it IS if one considers the quarter of a circle as the *RELEVANT* angle entity to serve as a reference) or you call the full circle a unit (or 100, 1000, whatever)! With all due respect to the military folks I'd like to think that they would be better off adopting the grade. Even if 1 mil approximates 1 m at 1 km mark, it's STILL an *approximation*! I have been in the military before and I don't recall why this approximation would be so useful as to be irresistible for a choice of angle scale. But, I might be wrong. So, am I missing something here? Marcus On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 17:30:30 Terry Simpson wrote: >Ma Be wrote: >> Joseph B. Reid wrote: >>>The right angle, i.e. 900, would become 1.570 796 327.......rad. Try >>>selling that to machinists. >> >>Indeed. The rad is only good and useful when working with equations in >>a... "math environment", so to speak. There's unfortunately nothing >>practical about it. > >Yes there is. It is so useful that it is the basis of the default unit of >angle used by NATO (the 'mil') >6400 mil = 2000pi mrad = 360 deg >1 mil ~ 1 mrad > >It is useful to military because >1 mil ~ 1 metre at 1 km >NATO compasses, binoculars and sights are all marked in mil. > > ____________________________________________________________ Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
