Year 10 » measurement

Circle 360 degrees, but why 360!

y42au — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 23:25:06 +0000

So have you ever wondered why there are 360 degrees in a circle? Or why there are 60 minutes in an hour? or 60 seconds in a minute? Seems rather weird doesn’t it. Well, don’t worry – it’s not an evil conspiracy.

Simple Answer: Blame the Babylonians (about 4000 years ago!) – they used the Sexagesimal system. Don’t get excited – it means that instead of using base 10 (as we do) they used base 60. They chose 60 because 60 has a lot of factors, which made fraction calculations a lot easier!

Like to know more on the Babylonians and mathematics, then check out this site that gives you a great overview.

For more info check out Shaun McCarthy’s blog or see what Dr Math has to say about it! You can also read more about Sexagesimal on wikipedia.

Latitude and Longitude

y42au — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:44:00 +0000

http://www.professores.uff.br/hjbortol/arquivo/2006.1/applets/earth_en.html

This website helps the understanding of the concepts of latitude and longitude and it allows the visualization of geographical elements over the Earth’s surface like meridians, parallels, poles, political divisions and the location of many countries’ capitals.

Pythagoras

y42au — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:54:15 +0000

Proof the theorem for yourself here with this great interactive site.
Learn more about Pythagoras here.
Looking for proofs of Pythagoras Theorem then head here, there’s heaps!