Degrees of Angle - Sixty Symbols

[MrSuperZangief]

Hmm, as a Swede i need to change the tilt of the earth to 0

[oldi184]

5 thumbs down? WTH? Who? What person will vote no? A caveman or idiot i guess. Its very interesting. I dont get some ppl.

[1Ryon]

did you say pole star or pulsar

[MikeRoePhonicsMusic]

2:10 - Awesome circle!

[vertexgo]

I divide into 1, 10, 100 and 1000 degrees only. 60, 12, 360, 24, 28 to 31 and 365 is for n00bs only.

[alfiestoppani]

Meghan is very good at drawing circles. <:3D~

[Horathgar42]

Isn't 360 degrees because of sexagesimal, When the babylonians rounded a year to 360 days? I'm just guessing here, but it sounds right.

[alfiestoppani]

@Horathgar42 It's actually the Sumerians; but yes, they used the base number 60 which is very nice factor of 360.

[Horathgar42]

@alfiestoppani Yep, that sounds right. I knew it was something really far back.

[jimo1150]

I looooooooooooooooooooooooooooo­oooooooooooooove this chaneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee­el!!!!

[GoldenChantarelle]

Where oh where does a simple store clerk in small town Sweden, a mordern day servant, self-taught in these matters, find a lady like that, who ponders the measurements of the Universe, with a steady strong voice, and most beautiful big black holes in her eyes? And how could he, with his simple goofy country manners, possibly woo such a lady?

[PREM00SE]

I know it's been said a bunch of times, but those circles were perfect!  Reminds me of that story of Giotto's perfect circle. The Pope wanted proof of his skill as an artist, so he drew a perfect circle freeheand, with no compass. The Pope recognized his skill and hired him. Maybe she should get in touch with the Pope, and maybe paint the Seventeenth Chapel :P

[kulsinan]

The video editing is ridiculous!

[Tinteskou]

I thought the choice of 360 was because it was thought to be the number of days in a year, although obviously it's not chosen specially in the way radians are. Also can't degrees be divided into minutes, and then seconds?

[Mojosbigstick]

As Micheal Jackson sang:

"Keep on, like the Pole Star,

Don't stop 'til you get enough!"

Or at least he did in my household....

[yngmalm]

Im really impressed with her circles

[puncheex]

Actually the pole star (Polaris) was, in 2000, about 45 minutes off of the exact north pole - that's the distance of one and a half moon widths.

[puncheex]

... It will be at it's closest to the north pole in about 2105 CE, when it will be 14 minutes, or about half a moon width.

[MrEurgbp]

why am i thinking of how she is in bed? :)

[crogsvien]

I love astronomy especially, when Dr. Megan Gray talks about it.

Much more interesting

[Focusb4ufire]

I have work in 4 hours and i cant stop watching this stuff

[ib9rt]

Thumb tack = Drawing pin

You learn the name of that object as a young child, so what you call it pretty much defines where you grew up.

[javonoUTube]

52°57'18.39 N,  1° 8'57.52W

[javonoUTube]

Is Nottingham a submersible university, I'm sure she said 56 degrees north by 1 degree south.

[koopdawg]

52°49'52.50"N  1°15'11.07"W

[Tiki362]

is anyone else kind of mesmerized by the girls voice? i have no idea what it is about it

[thesaltyseacaptain]

I had always thought that the increase and decrease in daylight during the year was from the earth tilting back and forth, but it is actually a result of the position of the earths orbit. That was very interesting. It makes sense now that I think about it. The north star remains in relatively the same spot in the sky.

[puncheex]

@thesaltyseacaptain: Close; it's the result of the Earth's position IN it's orbit, which corresponds with a fixed amount of time since a yearly event, such as crossing the path crossing the ecliptic plane, which happens on the equinoxes (around the 20th of March and September). The spring equinox (vernal equinox in sort-of-Latin) is the usual point of measurement. This point in the stary sky precesses just as the poles do.

[thesaltyseacaptain]

@puncheex Okay, that makes sense. Very cool. Thanks for the clarification on that.

[robertwc82]

so is summer caused by the fact the 1 hemisphere is a tiny fraction closer to the sun or is it because that hemisphere is exposed to the sun for a longer period per rotation?

[hnaef83]

I think it's because when one hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun the Earth's surface there is closer to being perpendicular to the light coming from the Sun, so the light is spread over a smaller area and thus more concentrated.

Take a sheet of paper and shine a light on it -- you'll notice that if you tilt the paper the spot of light becomes larger but dimmer, and that the spot is at its brightest when the paper is perpendicular to the beam.  That's what's happening, if memory serves.

[robertwc82]

hmm that seems plausable.

others told me it was to do with distance not focus

i knew that didnt sound right

[gamesbok]

@robertwc82 That hemisphere is exposed for longer. Longer days in Summer. Think of the North Pole, doesn't see the sun at all in winter, summer time it can't hide.

[puncheex]

@robertwc82: No, it's caused by the larger fraction of time that the sun is above the equator and by the more direct sunlight shining down near the zenith point. As a matter of fact, right now in the Milankovitch cycle the sun is about 1% closer to Earth when the north hemisphere is in summer, which has the effect of making the north's seasons marginally more extreme than the south's, all other things being equal.

[J05hyyy]

lol 1000 degrees. just use radians

[CatalogOfExperience]

These guys just talk in circles.

[Drewskad00d]

Hehe.

[PERSONIFICATIONOFYAY]

Damn, that's one circular circle!!

[azamm500]

this so good so easy to understand thankyou and evry one work on this videos

[MarxCreations]

Degrees are 360 for a reason.

Divisable by

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 36, 72, 90, 120, 180, 360

More importantly the first few fractions.

Its the only number which is divisible up to 5 be even more accurate, it could go up to 7 but 2,520 would be rediculous

[Jokker88]

Do you think the fact that a year on earth is 365 days has had any influence on the amounts of degrees in a circle, seeing as they're pretty close. This way degrees would somehow be a little more "real" as they correspond to something in the real world. As in half a circle is 180degrees which in a human mind is pretty close to half a year?

Still, my dad who is a cartographer says they don't use 360 degrees anymore because it's not precise enough, they use i think 1000 degrees in a circle.

[Jockurt]

the thing with 360 has to do with the byzantine way of counting. their numerical system wasn't based on 10 but on 6.

[MarxCreations]

Hmm missed the 6 out... But the point still remains.

[puncheex]

@Jokker88: I dunno - you'd have to find a Summerian astrologer and ask him.

Your Dad's system of measurement is no more precise than any other. There are other system, namely radians (2*PI of them in a full circle) and gradians (400). I couldn't find a reference to a name for your Dad's system; it sounds like it was an outcome of the French metric design which failed (like their time measurement systems) except in one small corner of applied science/engineering.

[GodMatt50]

Dr Gray is one hot scientist and she can draw fantastic circles.

what more does a man want!!

[xlrv1]

Well, one could ask for a woman who maps dark matter.

[deryk703]

Or one that creates dark matter :O

[goldenman212]

@GodMatt50 Sammich's

[hooloovoo1st]

@GodMatt50 Hah! While watching I pointed out to a friend that she'd drawn an excellent circle, 'pah, luck' he said. Then later, 'OMG she did it again!!' :p.

[disorganizedorg]

@GodMatt50 I was going to comment on her freehand circle drawing ability myself but I didn't know her name. She does an awesome job of explaining things.

[xlrv1]

Interesting how most readers find Dr Gray's accent to be a mix of English and Usanian, although someone spotted her as Canadian early on. She doesn't sound English to me: I guess that means we Canadians sound slightly English to many Usanian ears. My guess is that she is from the Ottawa valley, or maybe southern Ontario.

[culwin]

She says "about" and not "aboot"... must be from very close to USA :)

[xlrv1]

Culwin, it is a common misconception that English Canadians say "aboot" because Usanians have absolutely no ears for diphthongs. We say "about" with -o-u-, not "abaht" like most of your fellow citizens.

[canadafreakazoid]

try Britain

[archaedemos]

i liked your vid. But i still wanna get up there (space) and take a look for myself... (: just to make sure we are not all being hooliganised

[nottinghamscience]

Dr Gray's drawings can be enjoyed in more detail at Flickr, where all the scientists' diagrams are scanned and kept for posterity.... Our Flickr name is also sixtysymbols

[x246869]

The tack sees the sun setting in the east :)

[BGenerous]

Small goof up on the animation at 3:54. As the Earth tilts, so does its shadow (its terminator). To really show the cause of seasons, it would have been better if the shadow had not tilted so that a solstice was being shown rather than an equinox.

[sixtysymbols]

fair point and well observed..... but give me a chance on limited budget! I don't have the ability to make my own graphics! we're using apples for goodness sake! :)

[BGenerous]

lol - the apple was actually quite effective! :)

[ALAPINO]

And delicious!

[blenderpanzi]

@sixtysymbols Not exactly for this but for other things you might want to take a look at celestia: a free and open source planetarium. I installed the 1 mio. stars extension and fly at warp speed from star to star. :)

But there is no easy way to change the axis of a planet.

[painxtreme]

@sixtysymbols Ah, c'mon Brady, a good Artist never blames his brushes:) Honestly, for video editing you're not going to get much better than a well equipped Macintosh. As a matter of fact, most radio and television channels use Apples to do pre and post production work. They still have the big boards and such, but more and more, their functions are being taken over by Apples that have that big board onscreen. If that still doesn't convince you, think if you were doing this on 16mm film stock.

[pin3appel]

lol that guy's face at like 4:44 made me laugh out loud. he's so epic

[solomsolomol]

don't mess with gordon freeman :)

[pin3appel]

dude that is gordon freeman, IF HE COULD TALK

[MarksLPs]

WELL PLAYED!

[drumbum99]

she can draw circles incredably well :P

[Woad25]

No kidding! I was getting jealous watching that. I wonder where she is from though. I don't think that's a British accent, it sounds sort of like a hard Cuban accent to me.

[prfctday]

That's a very British accent with American mixed in (I couldn't say what part of America as I'm English)... my guess is that she's English but studied in America for many years as opposed to her being from America and having studied in England for many years. SixtySymbols will tell us I reckon :D

[T1carus]

got to be american living in britain, she has perfect teeth :)

[prfctday]

lol, good point... perfect teeth...I noticed that too :-/ then again any sensible (and affluent) English person living in the states for years would get some decent bridge work done :-D but the more i listened the more I thought she might be American / studied in England... omg it's such a duel accent!!

[hayeder]

what part of england are you from?! lol that sounds quite american to me

[prfctday]

I'm from Windsor... she says lots of words in a south east English accent. I couldn't place the area - it's what I would call a generic south-east university / college accent. Yeah I'm pretty sure now that she's American but has studied /worked in England for a number of years.

[T1carus]

She calls it a tack so american im sure

[kongotech2]

I noticed that to. I thought about it when she drew it :) these videos are just incredibly interesting.

[SteelBalor]

LOL that's an insane circle drawing ability.

[Vladk1000]

I actually don't hear much of her English accent, and something about the way she talks makes me think she's from Canada and not from America. So I'm guessing she lived in Canada all her life but then moved to England.

[sixtysymbols]

Dr Meghan Gray is originally Canadian - but now very happy calling Nottingham home! :)

I don't known where she learned to draw such excellent circles.

[culwin]

Hm, I was going to say Canadian except she says "about" and not "aboot"...

[sixtysymbols]

All the sketches and diagrams the physicists draw are scanned and can be seen on Flickr... We're called sixtysymbols on there too!

[dracolas]

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