Good vs. Evil
- Thread starter Randomguy404
- Start date
91 padfoote is about to be pissed... glad I'm not in the line of fire
Derp... fat thumb syndrome
Derp... fat thumb syndrome
92 I agree. Historical reasons, probably.
Like how astronomers record positions in the sky in terms of degrees, minutes, and seconds relative to Earth's equator and in hours, minutes, and seconds relative to the vernal equinox, an imaginary point in the sky that only kind of makes sense in the geocentric model (and is utterly meaningless in the Copernican heliocentric model) and it doesn't even stay in the same place from year to year; and how the classifications of stars in order of decreasing temperature are O, B, A, F, G, K, M, rather than any sensible order (i.e. alphabetically); and how there are a dozen different classifications of quasars when really the only variables are (a) what angle you're looking at them and (b) whether or not there's a jet of energetic matter being spewed out on the side facing you; and how Ib, Ic, Id, etc, and IIa, IIb, IIc, etc. supernovae are all have basically the same cause, but Ia supernovae are different entirely...
At least degrees have the advantage that a full circle's worth of them (i.e. 360) is divisible by a lot of numbers, so there are a lot of different angles that can be represented using an integer number of degrees.
Like how astronomers record positions in the sky in terms of degrees, minutes, and seconds relative to Earth's equator and in hours, minutes, and seconds relative to the vernal equinox, an imaginary point in the sky that only kind of makes sense in the geocentric model (and is utterly meaningless in the Copernican heliocentric model) and it doesn't even stay in the same place from year to year; and how the classifications of stars in order of decreasing temperature are O, B, A, F, G, K, M, rather than any sensible order (i.e. alphabetically); and how there are a dozen different classifications of quasars when really the only variables are (a) what angle you're looking at them and (b) whether or not there's a jet of energetic matter being spewed out on the side facing you; and how Ib, Ic, Id, etc, and IIa, IIb, IIc, etc. supernovae are all have basically the same cause, but Ia supernovae are different entirely...
At least degrees have the advantage that a full circle's worth of them (i.e. 360) is divisible by a lot of numbers, so there are a lot of different angles that can be represented using an integer number of degrees.
92 Sounds a lot like why the US still uses imperial units, even though the rest of the world starting moving to metric more than one hundred and fifty years ago.