Monday, November 7, 2011

Do radians always have pi in them? (i.e. every angle is always equal to x times pi over a number). Right?

Not necessarily. The radian measure of an angle is equal to the ratio of the arc length joining the initial and terminal sides of the angle to the radius of the circle that contains that arc length. Therefore, the radian measure of an angle can be any real number, but it is often useful to express the arc length in terms of pi if it is a meaningful fraction of the overall circle's cirference, so many radian values have pi in them, but they don't absolutely have to.

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