The Beauty of Science: Radian Visual Explanation
Nicolas D’Amore writes:
Ever wonder what a radian is?
When you are doing animation in a 3D software, sometimes you have to deal with radians, especially when rotating objects. They are not so intuitive as degrees are.
So here’s a little and short visual explanation about what a radian is.This is the fourth chapter of a series I’ve started a while ago, called “The Beauty of Science”.
The first three chapters were about optical illusions; right now I’m approaching math, that is a topic a lot of people hate without even knowing why.
I think that if you learn math in the proper way, it can be very easy and even interesting!
That’s what I aim for with this little demonstration.
Made with Blender 2.79, rendered with Cycles.
Special thanks to Francesco Siddi.
I hope you like it!
The title should be “What is a radian?”, not “What a radian is?”.
It’s not entirely wrong. As a statement it’s okay: ‘An elephant is mostly heavier than what a dog is’. As a question though, yours is correct and a more accepted wording.
Seemed clear and factual. Thanks Nicolas, make more please.
I understand the balls in the intro were rendered with Cycles. A radian is the angle for which the length of the arc is the same as radius’. And this angle is not 60° as the video suggests. It’s about 57°. The difference matters as we’re talking science.w
The video clearly shows that a radian is not 60 degrees, since three of them don’t complete the half circle. It would better if the video continued and showed that a complete circle is 2π radians.
That’s exactly what I learned from the video…
Great job Nicolas, but a little explanation text at the end, or below the image, like this great comment from Lukasz, would be even better. Seeing the video alone it appears that a radian is the arc with the same length as the radius (the red part) while it’s actually the angle.
Wikipedia has about the same animation, but with a text below it, it gives a more precise explanation.
Good job though, show us more please :)