Conversion problem.

1. Dec 12, 2013

chemistry1

How do you convert angles from the sexagecimal system to centesimal one ?

For example

63 degrees 14 minutes 51 seconds reduced to centesimal ??

Here's how it's done but I don't understand the steps.....

http://postimg.org/image/4tat51y63/

Thank you

2. Dec 12, 2013

Staff: Mentor

What they're doing is converting the minutes and seconds to a decimal fraction of a degree, and then converting the 63.xxyy° to grads, where 1 grad = a right angle.

After the conversion to grads + fractional grads, they converted the first two decimal places to whatever is the equivalent of minutes in grad measure, and they converted the 3rd and 4th decimal places to whatever is the equivalent of seconds in grad measure.

It looks like they have a typo in the very last part, where they have 70g 275 = 70g 27.5 = 70g 27 50. That part at the end (50) should be 50`, I believe.

Angle measure in degrees (°) and radians is very common, but angle measure in grads is rarely used, as far as I know. I believe it was used in Russia and/or the Soviet Union.