360 Degrees.. 24Hr 60mm 60ss

The magical numbers

A few years back, I had wondered.. why the 360 degrees of the circle? It is a representation of a circular angle, and could be any number? Was there anything absolute about 360?

But then, it did seem like a magical number. If we were to slice the circle into 2s, 3s, 4s.. it always landed an integer angle. This was the nearest I could think of.

The Magic of 360

It factored 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30, 36, 40, 45, 60, 72, 90, 120, 180, and 360

I did ask a few people. Neelesh ji had told that 360 was close to the average of Solar and Lunar year period of 365.2422 and 354. Maybe just a coincidence? Or maybe, we are living and celebrating the math of the Grand Universe..

Avg [365.2422 (solar year) + 354 (lunar year)] = 359.62

And to think of day-to-day proceedings.. the 24 hours, the 60 minutes and 60 seconds.. they all seem to gel in this 360 number.

Perhaps, like we have the efficient octal and binary system for chanting meters and modern-day computers, the amazing decimal system for human use, 360 is the language of circularity.

In my high school days, I immensely enjoyed Geometry and Construction. It seemed so cool that we could bisect the 360 and easily get 180, 90, 45 degrees and so on. And by constructing equilateral triangles and further bisecting, the 60s, 30s, 15s were easily possible. I tried many futile attempts with the Ubiquitous 10.. Little did I realise that the 10 was the king of the counting decimal system, and perhaps of not much significance in the land of angular symmetry.

For we have the 4 quadrants and directions, the 8 pizza slices, and the polygonal arrangements of atoms, and triangular squarish hexagon of pineapples that perhaps represent the angles of the Nature.

We owe it to the Giants. It is believed Babylonians devised the clock like we see it. The very ancient Sanskrit works do have aho-ratri which seems like hour. The history is never easily tangible but nevertheless, we enjoy the fruit of the Universe and of the great minds..

Read this topic on LinkedIn’s Fermat’sLibrary today and hence had these passing thoughts.

Nilesh Oak ji also puts it “360 Degrees x 60 min = 21600 arc min. 1 arc-min is the natural resolution of a naked eye for celestial objects in the sky.”

Connecting the ability of the eye to discern the light of distant celestial objects.. Wow!?

We are so consumed today in consumer electronics. Our problem statement is not about the distant angles of the bodies that light the sky.. but scintillating displays and the refresh rates as a function of eye and its ability to discern motion.. 60 fps.. and gamers 144 fps and so.. again in a language of 60s..