What is the method for converting radians to degrees?

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I run into this occasionally and always forget how to do it.

One of those things that pop up ever so often.

Also, what's the formula to convert angles expressed in radians to degrees and back again?

12 Answers
radians = degrees * (pi/180)

degrees = radians * (180/pi)

As for implementation, the main question is how precise you want to be about the value of pi. There is some related discussion here

a complete circle in radians is 2*pi. A complete circle in degrees is 360. To go from degrees to radians, it's (d/360) * 2*pi, or d*pi/180.

x rads in degrees - > x*180/pi
x degrees in rads -> x*pi/180

I guess if you wanted to make a function for this [in PHP]:

function convert($type, $num) {
    if ($type == "rads") {
          $result = $num*180/pi();
        }

    if ($type == "degs") {
          $result = $num*pi()/180;
        }

    return $result;
  }

Yes, that could probably be written better.

This works well enough for me :)

// deg2rad * degrees = radians
#define deg2rad (3.14159265/180.0)
// rad2deg * radians = degrees
#define rad2deg (180/3.14159265)

360 degrees = 2*pi radians

That means deg2rad(x) = x*pi/180 and rad2deg(x) = 180x/pi;

pi Radians = 180 degrees

So 1 degree = pi/180 radians

or 1 radian = 180/pi degrees

Here is some code which extends Object with rad(deg), deg(rad) and also two more useful functions: getAngle(point1,point2) and getDistance(point1,point2) where a point needs to have a x and y property.

Object.prototype.rad = (deg) => Math.PI/180 * deg;
Object.prototype.deg = (rad) => 180/Math.PI * rad;
Object.prototype.getAngle = (point1, point2) => Math.atan2(point1.y - point2.y, point1.x - point2.x);
Object.prototype.getDistance = (point1, point2) => Math.sqrt(Math.pow(point1.x-point2.x, 2) + Math.pow(point1.y-point2.y, 2));
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