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Degrees instead of radians

Benny Bomstærk
Posted 11 years ago

If I for instance change rectangular to polar coordinate it comes out like this:

ToPolarCoordinates[{15, 20}]
{25, ArcTan[4/3]}

Can anyone tell me how to get this in degrees? So far I've tried this, which is described in the documentation under "Radian" Convert[n Radian,newunits] converts n Radian to a form involving units newunits.:

Convert[ArcTan[4/3] Radian, Degree]
Convert[ArcTan[4/3], °]

Thanks!
POSTED BY: Benny Bomstærk
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Eric Rimbey
Eric Rimbey
Posted 10 years ago
POSTED BY: Eric Rimbey

I'm pretty sure this is not possible, in nearly all applications radians are a more 'natural' unit to use, rather than degrees. Though degrees are more natural for most humans, because it give you 'nice' numbers...

You could use two functions to simplify your work:

ToDeg[rad_] := N[rad/Degree]
FromDeg[deg_] := N[Degree deg]
POSTED BY: Sander Huisman

Hi,

this might work:

N[ArcTan[4/3]/Degree]

This

DMSList[N[ArcTan[4/3]/Degree]]

provides an alternative form.

Cheers,

Marco
POSTED BY: Marco Thiel
Benny Bomstærk
Benny Bomstærk
Posted 10 years ago

Thanks both of you. This:

N[ArcTan[4/3]/Degree]

...was exactly what I was looking for!

Is there a way to change degrees to default? Like on a calculator?
POSTED BY: Benny Bomstærk
Eric Rimbey
Eric Rimbey
Posted 11 years ago

Benny,

What version of Mathematica are you using? If pre-9, then you need to load the Units package before you can use Convert.

In[1]:= Needs["Units`"]

In[4]:= Convert[ArcTan[4/3], Degree]

Out[4]= (180 \[Degree] ArcTan[4/3])/\[Pi]

Otherwise, use UnitConvert.

In[4]:= UnitConvert[Quantity[ArcTan[4/3], "Radians"], "AngularDegrees"]

Out[4]= Quantity[(180 ArcTan[4/3])/\[Pi], "AngularDegrees"]
POSTED BY: Eric Rimbey
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