By Tech Powered Dad | July 1, 2010
If you’re a student of geometry or trigonometry, you’ve probably come across problems involving degrees, minutes, and seconds. This is an alternative to measuring in decimal degrees, and it works a lot like time.
The conversion rates are:
- 1 degree = 60 minutes
- 1 minute = 60 seconds.
As a result, 1 degree = 3,600 seconds.
If you want to convert from degrees, minutes, seconds to decimal degrees, you can divide by 60 and 3600 for minutes and seconds respectively. In reverse, you would multiply. The whole conversion process can get time consuming, especially in a testing situation, which is why it’s good to know how to use your graphing calculator.
This video lesson walks you through degrees-minutes-seconds on the TI-nspire.
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