What is a nautical knot in mph?
Answers:
A nautical mile is 6076.11549 feet and a regular mile is 5280 feet.
Dividing out: 6076.11549/5280 = 1.15077944 miles which is the same ratio for knots and mph.
BTW - a nautical mile is derived from one minute of lattitude (the north-south scale on a chart). There are 60 minutes in a degree, and of course 360 degrees over the whole earth. That means there are exactly 24,000 nautical miles around the earth from north pole to south pole and back.
The reason mariners use nautical miles instead of regular miles is that it is very easy to find distances on a nautical chart by comparing the unknown distance against the vertical north/south lattitude scale on the edge of the chart. The number of minutes of lattitude is how many nautical miles your distance is.
The reason that a nautical mile per hour is called "knot" instead of "naut" is historical. Ship's speeds used to be measured by throwing a wooden board overboard with a weight on it that would keep it floating up right. This board would have a rope attached to it, and as the ship sailed, the board would pull more and more of the coiled rope overboard. This rope had knots tied in it at regular intervals. They measured the boat speed by how many of these knots were pulled overboard during the time it took for a particular sized sand timer to run out, usually about 30 seconds. After some calculation, they arrived at the speed. Later, the board and rope would be pulled back on board so they could throw it again.
pretty close to a mile per hour.
(Knot = nautical mile)
1 knot = 1 nautical mile/hour = 1.852 km/h = 1.150779 mile (statute)/hour
Sincerely, The King
1 knot = 1.15 mph
from air medical dispatcher
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