Angling without a fishing rod
Angles are not angels spelt badly, nor are they those bumpy things that join your legs to your feet. Angles can be seen wherever you look.
To see what an angle is: Imagine a clock (with hands) at 3 o'clock. The minute hand is pointing upwards and the hour hand is pointing directly to the right:
How many minutes would the minute hand have to travel before it covers the hour hand? When the hands overlap, the time is quarter past three i.e. the minute hand will have travelled for 15 minutes.
On most clocks, little marks indicate where the minutes are. Imagine that we want to make the clock a bit more accurate. To do this we mark out 90 little marks instead of 15. Each little mark now is called a degree and the amount the minute hand moves to get to quarter past three can also be said to be 90 degrees or this is quite often more commonly seen in its shorthand form of 90o and is also called a right-angle.
In other words, the angle between the minute hand when it is at 12 and the hour hand when it is at 3 is 90 degrees.
When the minute hand moves full circle (i.e. it moves round an hour), the angle will be 4 x 90 = 360 degrees. Do you see where the 4 comes from?
Angles can be applied to any two lines with a single fixed point (not just clock and watch hands!).
What's the point of learning about angles?
Anyone who works in art or design must understand angles. People creating technical drawings and plans for views of houses, engines, beer cans etc. tend to draw these objects at particular angles when drawing in 3D (three dimensions).
Other people who use angles regularly in their jobs are builders, mechanics, engineers etc. in fact anyone who needs to interpret objects and shapes will need to use and understand angles.
