Angle of rotation

Let’s imagine you and your friends are all standing in a circle, holding hands. Now your teacher says, “Everyone, turn to your right by 90 degrees,” which means to turn a quarter of a full circle. So you all let go of each other’s hand and start spinning together.

When the spinning is over, you see that you have all turned right by exactly the same amount, or angle. This is called the angle of rotation. In other words, angle of rotation is just a number that tells us how much we’ve turned around in a circle.

So, if you turned by a quarter circle, your angle of rotation is 90 degrees. If you turned by half a circle or 180 degrees, your angle of rotation is 180 degrees. It’s just like telling someone the time: the hour hand on a clock has moved a certain number of hours, and the angle of rotation is that number times 30 degrees.

Angles of rotation are important because they help us to understand how things move and change. They are used in many areas of mathematics, such as geometry, trigonometry, and calculus, and they play a key role in physics and engineering too. So, next time you and your friends are spinning around in circles, you can impress everyone by telling them the angle of rotation!