[roundsquare]

"the problem is with degrees"

I partly disagree. For kids, defining something using irrational numbers would probably be very confusing. Using integers is much easier.

So, why 360? Because we talk about right angles a lot and we want to have a third, a half, etc... and (I'm guessing) they wanted it to be a multiple of 10.

I think the point is to be able to teach geometry to kids without worrying about them getting confused by fractions and/or irrational numbers.

[amalcon]

So just use cycles instead of degrees. Simple fractions or a circle. Fractions are already taught to young children as "how many pieces a circle[1] can be divided into." It would seem to kill two birds with one stone.

I think most kids who even study pre-Calc could handle applying a conversion of "2pi" from there.

[1] Where circle="cake","pie","pizza",etc.

[roundsquare]

Good point. I forgot we learned about "slices of a pizza" that early.

By the way, the history of the degree is somewhat interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degree_(angle)