A nautical mile is based
on the circumference of the planet Earth. If you were to cut the Earth in half
at the equator, you could pick up one of the halves and look at the equator as
a circle.
You could divide that circle into 360 degrees. You could then divide
a degree into 60 minutes. A minute of arc on the planet Earth is 1 nautical
mile. This unit of measurement is used by all nations for air and sea travel.
A knot is a unit of
measure for speed. If you are traveling at a speed of 1 nautical mile per hour,
you are said to be traveling at a speed of 1 knot.
A kilometre is also defined using the planet Earth as a standard of
distance. If you were to take the Earth and cut it in half along a line passing
from the North Pole through Paris, and then measure the distance of the curve
running from the North Pole to the equator on that circle, and then divide that
distance by 10,000, you would have the traditional unit for the kilometre as defined in 1791 by the French Academy of Sciences.
A nautical
mile is 1,852 meters, or 1.852 kilometres.
In the English measurement system, a nautical mile is 1.1508 miles, or
6,076 feet.
To travel
around the Earth at the equator, you would have to travel (360 * 60) 21,600
nautical miles, 24,857 miles or 40,003 kilometres.
Comparison
chart
Mile versus Nautical Mile
comparison chart
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Mile
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Nautical Mile
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Yards
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1 mile = 1,760 yd
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1 nautical mile = 2025.372 yd
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Feet
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1 mile = 5,280 ft
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1 nautical mile = 6076.115 ft
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Inches
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1 mile = 63,360 in
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1 nautical mile = 72,913 in
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Kilometres
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1 mile = 1.609 km
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1 nautical mile = 1.852 km
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Miles
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1 mile = 1 mile
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1 nautical mile = 1.151 mi
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