Why a circle is divided in 360 degree?

Answer 1

The selection of 360 as the number of degrees (i.e., smallest practical sub-arcs) in a circle was probably based on the fact that 360 is approximately the number of days in a year. Its use is often said to originate from the methods of the ancient Babylonians. Ancient astronomers noticed that the stars in the sky, which circle the celestial pole every day, seem to advance in that circle by approximately one-360th of a circle, i.e., one degree, each day. (Ancient calendars, such as the Persian Calendar, used 360 days for a year.) Its application to measuring angles in geometry can possibly be traced to Thales who popularized geometry among the Greeks and lived in Anatolia (modern western Turkey) among people who had dealings with Egypt and Babylon. Another motivation for choosing the number 360 is that it is readily divisible: 360 has 24 divisors (including 1 and 360), including every number from 1 to 10 except 7. For the number of degrees in a circle to be divisible by every number from 1 to 10, there would need to be 2520 degrees in a circle, which is a much less convenient number.