system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why are degrees measured in the way they are, ie: 90 is a right angle and 360 is a revolution, as opposed to a more simple/rounded number like 500 or 1000? Is there a reason behind it or is it arbitrary?
gpt
It comes from the ancient Babylonian number system. Their number system was based on the number 60 which is a very practical number if you want to split things evenly. They divided the circle into 6 equal sections and then these sections were further divided into 60 degrees. We further divide degrees into 60 arcminutes and each arcminute into 60 arcseconds. We just have not found a good advantage to changing this. Although there have been attempts. The most famous was the attempt at introducing grads. There are 400 grads in a circle. Mathematicians however prefer to use radiens. There are 2 pi radiens in a circle which makes a lot of mathematical equations much simpler then when working with degrees.