Some while ago, I covered how to convert degrees into radians (and vice versa) in your head. I missed a trick, though: I didn’t tell you about the exact values, which would probably have been a bit more useful.
By definition, a circle – 360º – is 2π radians, which (hopefully obviously) means that a semicircle – 180º, keep up – is π radians. That’s a handy thing to know.
Getting into degrees
This is the wrong way! As I’ve said before, degrees are far inferior to radians in every possible application. But still, I imagine you might want to go back to baby-angles once in a while.
You’ll quite often see an angle given in radians as some fraction of π – π/6 or 3π/2 or similar. It’s pretty easy to turn those into degrees: if you’re good with fractions, just replace the π with 180 and work it out: π/6 becomes 180/6 = 30º. 3π/2 becomes 3 × 180 / 2 = 3 × 90 = 270º1.
If you don’t like fractions, I’ll sit here and roll my eyes a bit, then tell you that if there’s a number on top of the fraction, you times by it; and then you divide by the number on the bottom. Meanwhile, I’ll line up a Teletubbies DVD for you or something. You’re an A-level student, you need to be able to work with fractions.
Reverting to radians
Ah, that’s better. Turning things into radians is, of course, the way forward. It’s a simple three-step process:
- Put 180 under your degree angle, making it a fraction – 300º becomes 300/180
- Cancel down your fraction (here, there’s a factor of 60): 5/3
- Put a π either on top or next to the fraction – you can write $\frac{5\pi}3$ or $\frac53 \pi$.2
And that’s it. Of course, it’s worth knowing the more common ones off the top of your head:
- π/6 is 30º
- π/4 is 45º
- π/3 is 60º
- π/2 is 90º
Thanks to @C_J_Smith for pointing out a mistake in the original version.