Comment by perilunar
7 years ago
See also gradian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradian
"one grad of arc along the Earth's surface corresponded to 100 kilometers of distance at the equator; 1 centigrad of arc equaled 1 kilometer."
i.e. both nautical miles and kilometres are derived from the size of the Earth. Plain old statute miles are just a mess, and best avoided.
Yup, so that will be the best thing once everyone switches to using grads for latitude and longitude.
No! Radians is the SI unit. I would possibly also accept fractions of a whole rotation.
The arbitrary factor of 400 (or 360), is simply not helpful for machine calculations.
400 is pretty great though. a straight angle is 100 gradians, and a bunch of things get simplified. 30 and 60 degrees get worse though
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