Do YOU know why 360 is SPECIAL?

Why are there 360 degrees in a circle?

Do you know why there are 360 degrees in a circle? Is it just a random number that was chosen, and could easily have been 100, 720 or anything else? Or is there a more logical reason behind this? There is no definitive answer to this question, but we do have a pretty good idea of why we use 360 degrees for circles.

Let’s start with the number itself. 360 is a number that is divisible by every number from 1 to 10, apart from 7, it actually has a total of 24 numbers that it divides into. This is a larger amount of divisors than any other positive whole number up to its own value, which makes it a highly composite number. For this reason, highly composite numbers are good base numbers to perform common calculations with.

But this still seems a bit too random to justify it as the number of degrees in a circle.
We know that there are roughly 365 days in a year, but many ancient civilisations like the Sumerians and Babylonians had 360 day calendars. From their point of view, they were looking at a celestial sphere of stars that were of a fixed position in the sky. The sun would appear to move along an ecliptic path over the fixed stars for a duration of 360 days, moving 1 degree a day.
The Sumerians and Babylonians also used the Sexagesimal number system, which basically uses 60 as a base number when making calculations. 60 is a highly composite number just like 360. It has 12 factors, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 and 60. This makes it great for simplifying common calculations.

Imagine it like this. Using 60 as a base number you can half, quarter and third it very easily. Half equals 30, a quarter equals 15 and a third equals 20. Nice round numbers. Now let’s do it with 100. Half equals 50, a quarter equals 25, but a third equals 33.3 recurring. Sumerians and Babylonians worked out that day to day calculations would be much easier using 60 rather than 100 or any other relatively low number.

If you took a circle and tried to fit an equilateral triangle inside it using the circles radius you could fit a total of 6 within the circle. Using the Sexagesimal system, each would have a base value of 60, which multiplied by 6 is 360.

So, in putting these factors together we can say these are the most probable reasons why we have 360 Degrees in a circle.

Do you think this all adds up, or do you have any other theories? We would love to know your thoughts on this subject and the video as a whole, so leave a comment below. If you enjoyed the video, please hit like and subscribe. We really appreciate your support in helping the channel grow!

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