Yes, of course, mathematicians as well!
Jim
Pierre Abbat wrote:
On Monday 23 March 2009 18:59:03 James R. Frysinger wrote:
I don't think that radians are going to go away in either of our
lifetimes. It's one of the derived units that physicists and many
engineers are fond of.
Mathematicians too. All trigonometric functions are naturally defined with the
angle in radians.
In my work, angles are expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds. Why DMS
instead of decimal degrees or gons I do not know, but they are measured with
a theodolite that divides the circle into some large round integral number of
parts. For expressing bearings and azimuths, radians would not make sense;
there would be an odd-sized interval just before 0. But I have to use
radians, because, on some older maps, curves are labeled with radius and
length but not angle or delta. To figure the delta (those old curves are
almost always tangent at both ends), I divide the length by the radius.
That's the delta in radians. Then I add or subtract that to the starting
bearing, which is in DMS. So I convert the delta to DMS. I've done this
enough that I have a radian in seconds memorized. It's 206264.8, and its
reciprocal is 4.848137e-6.
Pierre
--
James R. Frysinger
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Doyle, TN 38559-3030
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