#earlymathematics — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #earlymathematics, aggregated by home.social.
-
It niggles me that the #Babylonians, who used base 60, divided a circle into 360 degrees, not 60 (like the minutes of a clock face) or 3600. It seems untidy.
So I'm wondering whether what they were actually dividing up, into 60 parts, was one of the angles of an equilateral triangle: the simplest angle to construct.
Six of those fit nicely and satisfyingly inside a circle, so that's the obvious next step and gets you your 360°.