1 / 2012 Happy New Year -- commemorating a historical blunder

Why is the circle divided into 360 degrees ?

What is the logic of choosing a weird number 360 to divide a circle ? Why not choose something more manageable, like 10, 100 or 1000 ?

Early mathematicians who invented the science of "geometry" decided to divide a circle into 360 degrees. But why ? Why 360 ?

There, goes a story many of us have not heard of, or have forgotten. The word geometry itself is inspired from geo -- earth, metry-- measurements (just like the geo in geo-graphy, or geo-logy). We have just started a New Year according to our common Gregorian calendar. They say, we saw the earth going around the sun in some 360 days (according to their crude and primitive measurements). The earth just completed going around the sun once. In fact, we have just seen 366 (or 365) sunrises, since the last new Year's Day. This was the begining of the blunder we imposed on ourselves.

Although, later this was proved wrong, we continue to stick to the 360 degrees rule of circles (each degree reminds us of one day in earth's annual excursion), a big blunder which the world has accepted since ages. So, every time we celebrate New Year, we must think of this historic blunder which we made several centuries ago.

Subsequent generations of mathematicians, corrected all this, giving rise to a bewildering variety of calendars. A good collection of calendar related information can be found at ::: http://www.hermetic.ch/cal_stud.htm

The science of geometry grew into the science of astronomy (now we start looking at the stars). We have now come to the stage when we can actually hope to visit these celestial bodies or even inhabit them.

Is'nt it incredible that all this started the faulty premise of 360 degrees to a circle ?

PS: In fact, mathematicians have a much more logical and intuitive, although clumsier way to divide a circle .

As usual, maths saves you from suffering the blunder.

partha