Not to mention that they seem to have chosen one of the worst possible symbols: the one that happens to represent torque. Further, it looks a lot like t, which is often used to represent turns (== cycles == 2pi radians).
There are alphabets out there other than the Latin and Greek ones, with plenty of untapped symbols.
This is something I can't quite wrap my head around. Why would I want the symbol for a unit to be similar to a constant that I will very often use in the same calculations? That has a good chance of ruining my dimensional analysis if I finish up a calculation later. A bathroom break could convert 2 * pi radians into 1 cycle * radian, or 1 cycle into a unitless 2 * pi.
While not technically required, it's pretty convenient to treat radians as their own "angle" dimension. This lets you distinguish an angular velocity from a simple periodic repetition. The latter happen to rarely (never?) occur naturally, but I run into artificial ones often enough.
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Not to mention that they seem to have chosen one of the worst possible symbols: the one that happens to represent torque. Further, it looks a lot like t, which is often used to represent turns (== cycles == 2pi radians).
There are alphabets out there other than the Latin and Greek ones, with plenty of untapped symbols.
> it looks a lot like t, which is often used to represent turns
I see that as an asset. It makes the correspondence between 2Pi and one cycle even more obvious.
This is something I can't quite wrap my head around. Why would I want the symbol for a unit to be similar to a constant that I will very often use in the same calculations? That has a good chance of ruining my dimensional analysis if I finish up a calculation later. A bathroom break could convert 2 * pi radians into 1 cycle * radian, or 1 cycle into a unitless 2 * pi.
And these conversions would be correct, wouldn't they? Radians are length ratios, and as such dimensionless anyway.
While not technically required, it's pretty convenient to treat radians as their own "angle" dimension. This lets you distinguish an angular velocity from a simple periodic repetition. The latter happen to rarely (never?) occur naturally, but I run into artificial ones often enough.