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How to Convert DMS to Meters

Traveling is easy nowadays courtesy of the GPS devices, but it wasn't always like that. Back in the day, travelers had to use degrees, minutes and seconds (DMS) to adequately judge the distance between two points on a map. Determining DMS was difficult enough in itself, but further complicating the issue was that DMS then had to be converted to a distance. Suffice it to say, an arbitrary DMS value has no relevance to a traveler until its converted to a value that applies directly to the real world.

Instructions

- 1
  Multiply the degrees by 111,200 to obtain their value in meters. Given 6 degrees, for instance, the resulting value would be 6 * 111,200, or 667,200.
- 2
  Use a conversion factor of 1,853 meters per minute to convert minutes into meters. Thus, given 34 minutes, the result would be 34 * 1853, or 63,002.
- 3
  Calculate the remaining meters by multiplying the number of seconds by 30.9 meters. Given 23 seconds, the value would be 23 * 30.9, or 710.7.
- 4
  Add the values obtained in Step 1, Step 2 and Step 3 to obtain the final value and finish the conversion from DMS to meters. Given 667,200 meters, 63,002 meters and 710.7 meters, the final value would be 730,912.7 meters.

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