Megahertz to Degrees per second

IBM needed a clock that could derive both the CPU timing and the NTSC color-burst frequency (3.579545 MHz) for the built-in composite video output. Multiplying the color-burst frequency by 4/3 gave 4.77 MHz — a convenient compromise that let one crystal oscillator serve two purposes. The weird number was pure engineering pragmatism, not performance targeting.

The 433.05–434.79 MHz range is an ISM (Industrial, Scientific, Medical) band that is license-free in most of Europe. Cheap remote-control key fobs, weather stations, garage door openers, and IoT sensors all crowd into it because you can legally transmit at low power without a radio license. In the US, the equivalent unlicensed band is 315 MHz, which is why European and American car key fobs are not interchangeable.

AM encodes audio by varying the wave's amplitude, which is vulnerable to electrical interference (lightning, motors). FM varies the frequency instead, making it inherently noise-resistant. FM also has a wider channel bandwidth (200 kHz vs. AM's 10 kHz), allowing it to carry the full 20–15,000 Hz audio spectrum in stereo. The MHz carrier frequency itself isn't what improves quality — it's the modulation method and bandwidth.

Intel and AMD marketed processors by clock speed — 500 MHz, 1 GHz, 2 GHz — implying faster was always better. By 2004, Intel's Pentium 4 hit 3.8 GHz but ran so hot and consumed so much power that performance-per-watt cratered. The industry pivoted to multi-core designs: instead of one core at 4 GHz, you got two or four cores at 2 GHz each, doing more total work with less heat. Raw megahertz stopped being a useful buying metric.

Bluetooth operates in the 2.4 GHz ISM band (2,400–2,483.5 MHz), which is reserved globally for unlicensed use. This avoids the need for regulatory approval in each country. The trade-off is sharing the band with Wi-Fi, microwaves, and baby monitors. Bluetooth mitigates interference by hopping between 79 channels 1,600 times per second — if one frequency is jammed, it has already moved on.

Because °/s maps intuitively to human motion. Tilting your phone 90° in half a second means 180°/s — you can visualise that immediately. The same rate in rad/s (π ≈ 3.14) requires mental conversion. Consumer IMU datasheets list full-scale range in °/s (±250, ±500, ±2000°/s) because the target audience — app developers and game designers — thinks in degrees, not radians.

A standard-rate turn in aviation is 3°/s (completing 360° in two minutes), used for instrument approaches. A fighter jet in a hard combat turn can sustain 15–25°/s, and instantaneous snap rates during aggressive maneuvers can exceed 60°/s. At 20°/s in a tight bank, the pilot experiences 4–6 g of centripetal acceleration, which is near the limit of what a g-suit can compensate for.

A basketball spinning on a fingertip typically rotates at about 3–5 revolutions per second, which is 1,080–1,800°/s. The Harlem Globetrotters can push past 2,000°/s for brief showpiece spins. A professional bowler's ball rotates at roughly 300–500 RPM off the hand, which translates to about 1,800–3,000°/s. Spin rate matters for curve, grip, and the physics of the bounce.

PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) camera specs list maximum pan speed in °/s — typically 80–400°/s for preset movement and 0.1–5°/s for manual tracking. A camera that pans at 400°/s can whip from one side to the other in under a second, useful for switching between preset positions. The slower manual range lets an operator smoothly follow a walking person without jerky motion.

A standard-rate turn (Rate One) is defined as 3°/s, completing a full 360° circle in exactly two minutes. Air traffic controllers rely on this predictable rate to space aircraft in holding patterns and instrument approaches. The turn coordinator instrument in the cockpit marks the standard rate with reference lines. Faster rates exist (Rate Two is 6°/s), but standard rate keeps the bank angle comfortable at typical airspeeds.