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Another "fun fact" somewhat more relevant to the article is the gradient (aka. grad, or gon), it is a unit of angle equal to 1/400 of a turn, slightly smaller t
by GuB-42 1y ago
Another "fun fact" somewhat more relevant to the article is the gradient (aka. grad, or gon), it is a unit of angle equal to 1/400 of a turn, slightly smaller than a degree.
It goes well with the metre because 1 km is 1/100 grad of latitude on earth. It mirrors the nautical mile in that 1 nautical mile is 1/60 degree (1 arcminute) of latitude on earth.
The grad is almost never used on a day to day basis, even in France. It is still used in specialized fields, like surveying.
- vidarh 1y agoIn some languages, e.g. Norwegian, grad means degree.
- lxgr 1y agoI believe it was one out of three possible options (other than degrees and radians) to represent angles on my high school scientific calculator. Accidentally staying in "grad" mode when cycling through them (DEG -> RAD -> GRAD) was always a concern, especially since the difference between RAD and GRAD was easy to miss on the small LCD display (the indicator was via partial selection of the letters within a mask spelling "DEGRAD").