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Illustration of a unit circle. The variable t is an angle measure. Animation of the act of unrolling the circumference of a unit circle, a circle with radius of 1. Since C = 2πr, the circumference of a unit circle is 2π. In mathematics, a unit circle is a circle of unit radius—that is, a radius of 1. [1]
It is defined such that one radian is the angle subtended at the centre of a circle by an arc that is equal in length to the radius. [2] The unit was formerly an SI supplementary unit and is currently a dimensionless SI derived unit, [2] defined in the SI as 1 rad = 1 [3] and expressed in terms of the SI base unit metre (m) as rad = m/m. [4]
A circle with an equilateral chord (red). One sixtieth of this arc is a degree. Six such chords complete the circle. [6] The original motivation for choosing the degree as a unit of rotations and angles is unknown. One theory states that it is related to the fact that 360 is approximately the number of days in a year.
When radians (rad) are employed, the angle is given as the length of the arc of the unit circle subtended by it: the angle that subtends an arc of length 1 on the unit circle is 1 rad (≈ 57.3°), and a complete turn (360°) is an angle of 2 π (≈ 6.28) rad.
While a radian is defined as an angle on the unit circle where the arc and radius have equal length, a milliradian is defined as the angle where the arc length is one thousandth of the radius. Therefore, when using milliradians for range estimation, the unit used for target distance needs to be thousand times as large as the unit used for ...
In trigonometry, the gradian – also known as the gon (from Ancient Greek γωνία (gōnía) 'angle'), grad, or grade [1] – is a unit of measurement of an angle, defined as one-hundredth of the right angle; in other words, 100 gradians is equal to 90 degrees.
Ptolemy used a circle of diameter 120, and gave chord lengths accurate to two sexagesimal (base sixty) digits after the integer part. [2] The chord function is defined geometrically as shown in the picture. The chord of an angle is the length of the chord between two points on a unit circle separated by that central angle.
The solid angle of a sphere measured from any point in its interior is 4 π sr. The solid angle subtended at the center of a cube by one of its faces is one-sixth of that, or 2 π /3 sr. The solid angle subtended at the corner of a cube (an octant) or spanned by a spherical octant is π /2 sr, one-eight of the solid angle of a sphere. [1]