NavList:

This is fairly obvious if you think about it, but I enjoyed playing with the numbers while I was driving around yesterday, so here goes.

A nautical mile has been defined as 1852 meters by international agreement for over 75 years. If you turn the ratio on its head, 0.54 nautical miles is equal to 1.00008 km. It's so close to one because of the original definition of the meter which fixed 10,000 km along a selected meridian from the equator to the pole while there are 60*90 or 5400 nautical miles from the equator to the pole (by a now defunct definition which was very close to the current definition).

Another way to say it is that 0.9 degrees of latitude is 100km almost exactly. Also 54 knots is 100.008 kph.

-FER

----------------------------------------------------------------
NavList message boards and member settings: www.fer3.com/NavList
Members may optionally receive posts by email.
To cancel email delivery, send a message to NoMail[at]fer3.com
----------------------------------------------------------------