GCSE Maths - What are Bearings? (2026/27 exams) — Transcript

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1. 0:00[Music]
2. 0:05in this video we're going to take a look
3. 0:06at how to use bearings which are often
4. 0:08used in navigation
5. 0:11to start let's imagine that we have two
6. 0:13points
7. 0:14point a and point b
8. 0:16and we're asked to find the bearing of b
9. 0:19from a
10. 0:21so basically what this question is
11. 0:23asking is if we start at a
12. 0:26what direction do we need to travel in
13. 0:28to get to b
14. 0:31now if we draw an arrow going from a to
15. 0:33b
16. 0:34then we can see that we sort of need to
17. 0:36go up and to the right
18. 0:39or north and then east
19. 0:42however this description isn't very
20. 0:44specific
21. 0:45so what we can do instead is write the
22. 0:47direction as a bearing
23. 0:49and whenever you work with bearings
24. 0:50there are three important rules that you
25. 0:52need to be aware of
26. 0:54the first rule is that we always measure
27. 0:56the angle starting from north
28. 1:00so because in this question we want the
29. 1:02bearing from a we should add a north
30. 1:04line to point a so that we know where to
31. 1:07start the angle from
32. 1:09the second rule is that we always
33. 1:11measure the angle clockwise from north
34. 1:14so in this case that's going to be this
35. 1:16angle here that we want to measure
36. 1:19and not this angle around here
37. 1:21because this larger angle would be
38. 1:23measuring it counterclockwise
39. 1:27and finally the third rule is that we
40. 1:29always write our bearings using three
41. 1:31digits
42. 1:33so if you measured this angle with the
43. 1:34protractor and got 65 degrees
44. 1:37then to express that as a bearing you'll
45. 1:39need to write it as
46. 1:41065 degrees so that it has three digits
47. 1:48let's try another one
48. 1:50so this time we have the points p
49. 1:52and q and we need to find the bearing of
50. 1:56point p
51. 1:57from point q
52. 1:59so importantly this time we're trying to
53. 2:01find the bearing from q so we're
54. 2:03starting at q
55. 2:05and need to go in this direction to get
56. 2:07to b
57. 2:10so to find the bearing we're going to
58. 2:12start off by drawing the north arrow
59. 2:15and then we're going to measure this
60. 2:16angle here which is the clockwise angle
61. 2:19going around from north
62. 2:22and in this case this angle is 310
63. 2:24degrees
64. 2:26then as a last step we need to make sure
65. 2:28that our angle has three digits
66. 2:31which in this case it already does so
67. 2:33our bearing is 310 degrees
68. 2:37now one practical thing to point out
69. 2:39here is that most protractors only go up
70. 2:41to 180 degrees rather than 360 degrees
71. 2:45and so you may actually not be able to
72. 2:47measure this whole 310 degree angle at
73. 2:49once
74. 2:51if this is the case then it's probably
75. 2:53easier to measure this smaller angle
76. 2:56which you would find as 50 degrees
77. 2:58and then use that to work out our
78. 3:00bearing
79. 3:02which we could do by doing 360
80. 3:04minus 50
81. 3:06because remember there are 360 degrees
82. 3:08in a complete circle
83. 3:11and that would give us the 310 degrees
84. 3:13of our bearing
85. 3:17now when it comes to your real exams
86. 3:19they're often going to make these
87. 3:20bearing questions more difficult by
88. 3:22adding in a lot of extra information
89. 3:24or asking you to do something a bit more
90. 3:26complicated than just find a bearing
91. 3:29so this here is a more realistic exam
92. 3:31style question
93. 3:33feel free to give the video a pause and
94. 3:35have a go at yourself before i go
95. 3:37through it
96. 3:39okay so we're told in the question that
97. 3:42the diagram below shows the positions of
98. 3:44two people person a and person b
99. 3:48and that both of them are trying to find
100. 3:50a pond
101. 3:51then we're also told that the bearing of
102. 3:53the pond from person a is 56 degrees
103. 3:58and the bearing of the pawn from person
104. 4:00b is 260 degrees
105. 4:04and our job is to mark the position of
106. 4:06the pond with a cross and label it p
107. 4:11so the first thing that we would
108. 4:13normally do is draw our north arrows but
109. 4:16they've already given us those in the
110. 4:17question
111. 4:18so the first thing that we're going to
112. 4:19have to do is draw our bearings onto the
113. 4:22diagram
114. 4:24for the bearing of 56 degrees from a we
115. 4:27can use a protractor to measure a 56
116. 4:30degree angle clockwise from north
117. 4:32and then we can draw our bearing
118. 4:35and i've done it here as a dashed line
119. 4:38because i don't know where along the
120. 4:39line the pond will be
121. 4:41i just know that somewhere along this
122. 4:43line there will be a bond
123. 4:46then we can do exactly the same thing
124. 4:48for the bearing of 260 degrees from b
125. 4:51which will give us this line
126. 4:54and finally because we know that the
127. 4:56pond is on both of these lines
128. 4:58we know that it must be where they cross
129. 5:01which is just here
130. 5:03so we can label that point p
131. 5:06and that's it we found the pond
132. 5:12anyway that's everything for this video
133. 5:15so if you found it useful then please do
134. 5:17give us a like and subscribe
135. 5:19and thanks for watching
136. 5:27you