GCSE Maths Bearings
Introduction
Many students, especially those doing the GCSE Maths Foundation paper, find bearings a difficult topic. The hardest part for many is knowing what are you actually measuring?
The key to this topic is to remember three things:
- Start North which is zero degrees
- Measure in a clockwise direction
- Where you see the word “from”, that is where you are measuring from.
In this article we will simply discuss how bearings are written.
Bearings Example
If you take the bearing of B from A, then this is the angle through which a turn in the clockwise direction is made.
You must always start north and turn clockwise.
In the diagram above, the bearing of B from A is 045° and bearings are usually written in terms of three figures. Bearings are also known as three figure bearings.
Two GCSE Maths Bearings Examples
Starting North the bearing of B from A is 115°
Starting North the bearing of E from D is 330°
Compass Bearings
You should also be aware of compass bearings.
For instance if on a bearing due north then we could write this as 000°
Starting North a bearing East would be 090°
Starting North a bearing South would be 180°
Starting North a bearing West would be 270°
This is a very simple basic overview of bearings. You can have more complicated questions where some require you to calculate the bearing. This is generally done using trigonometry and a future article will be available on such a topic.
GCSE Maths bearings does not need to be considered as a difficult topic. When doing your GCSE Maths Revision make sure you have a protractor and understand how to use that protractor i.e. how to correctly position the protractor on the North line (which is 0) and to measure clockwise.
Below are some additional questions on bearing but look out for a future topic which shows how to calculate bearings involving calculations such as trigonometry.
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