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Yeah, but it hits different. Smaller number is smaller.
That’s why I use Kelvin. THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN DEGREES?!!
Degrees? While using Kelvin?? OP is a phony!
Should use Rankine with that logic. It comes out to 566.
100%
It’s just Americans having American perspectives promoted as world views.
It’s about crossing into triple digits, a new order of magnitude, it feels heavy.
But it’s also underwhelming when your usual reference for over 100 is, “WHAT IT’S HOT ENOUGH TO BOIL WATER OUTSIDE!?”
American: IT’S A HUNDRED AND SEVEN DEGREES OUTSIDE
Civilized people: no it fucking ain’t, you overdramatic princess
It doesn’t really though for people who doesn’t use fahrenheit.
brother, that’s what a world view is lmao, do you not understand this concept?
Most of us don’t really go anywhere outside of the US, the entire continental US is the literal equivalent of the collective EU. What do you want me to say? I literally don’t need to leave to US to experience something geographically unique.
I think they’ve meant world’s view, not worldview
im pretty sure the world’s view would be that we’re parasites destroying the well balanced nature of the ecology of the earth, but that’s just me.
geographically unique
Geographically perhaps. But the cultural and historical unique is something you are going to miss out on by staying inside your own home country for your entire life. You think your US regional differences are the same as the differences between two countries, but anyone who has experienced different countries will tell you in an instant that that is not so.
i mean culturally in terms of outside of the continental US sure. There’s plenty of interesting and unique culture within the US if you just go looking for it. Though a lot of it is going to be somewhat westernized in essence. If you want more eastern culture, obviously you’re going to have to go farther east, but i feel like that’s a given.
No, he’s right. The “one hundred” part really does add certain powers, Austin Powers
In Australia we go with “Farkin hot”
It’s that extra “one” of incredulity.
40 degrees, that’s just too hot.
41? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
For proof that this thread is just people justifying what they know as better somehow, look no further than Canada.
We do cooking temps in Fahrenheit, weather in Celsius. Human weights in pounds, but never pounds and oz. Food weights in grams, cooking weights in pounds and oz. Liquid volume in millilitres and litres, but cooking in cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. Speed & distance in kilometres, heights in feet and inches.
Try and give this any consistency and people will look at you like you’re fucked. The next town is 100km over, I’m 5ft 10in, a can of soda is 355ml, it’s 21c out and I have the oven roasting something at 400f. Tell me it’s 68f out and I will fight you.
People like what they are used to, and will bend over backwards to justify it. This becomes blatantly obvious when you use a random mix of units like we do, because you realize that all that matters is mental scale.
If Fahrenheit is “how people feel” then why are feet useful measurements of height when 90% of people are between 4ft and 6ft? They aren’t. You just know the scale in your head, so when someone says they’re 7ft tall you say “dang that’s tall”. That’s it.
This makes a lot of sense, and why I’d never survive in Canada.
As a Canadian idk why your using us an an example, we are wrong to do so and we blame Americans for giving us this bad habit.
I just see it positively and choose to believe you’re in the process of transitioning to enlightenment (metric). ;)
Outdoor temperature in °C, unless you’re talking about an outdoor pool then it’s often enough °F :-)
I think part of the reasons it’s so mixed might just be due to how many Amero-centric devices and parts are common between the two countries.
Y’all can take your shitty Phillips screws though. Roberts is by far superior ;-)
Imagine weighing people as big rocks, though.
Until the UK changes that, us Americans and Canadians can rest assured that nothing we are doing is quite that ridiculous.
Tell me it’s 68f out and I will fight you.
Note to self: High heat levels make Canadians cranky.
then why are feet useful measurements of height when 90% of people are between 4ft and 6ft? They aren’t. You just know the scale in your head, so when someone says they’re 7ft tall you say “dang that’s tall”. That’s it.
to be clear, we use feet and inches, and there is historical precedent for breaking things down once they get past a certain grouping, we only have 10 fingers after all. To me the difference between 200cm and 220 is literally fuck all. You ask me the difference between 4 ft and 6ft and i can pretty quickly tell you.
I find it weird that when measuring height in metric, people using cm exclusively, i’ve noticed this a lot actually, people will use cm or mm in places where it arguably doesn’t make any sense. I could see the justification for doing math maybe, but like, that defeats the whole point of it being metric no?
Shouldn’t you be using meters and cm for height specifically? Since most people are a good bit over one meter i feel like it would make sense to do it that way. But then again that’s just kind of a shit bucket worth of options you have, ideally you would use decimeters, but nobody uses those things for some reason.
Most of Europe just uses metres for people’s height. 1.67m, like that. I have no mental picture of that, so it doesn’t work for me. But they don’t seem to have any trouble, further evidence that it’s all just what you know.
hm, that’s weird, i’ve seen this first hand in a handful of cases, guess i just get the weird ones. Granted i still see it holding true in things like construction, where i guess it makes more sense, but it seems weirdly arbitrary to me.
I find it weird that when measuring height in metric, people using cm exclusively, i’ve noticed this a lot actually, people will use cm or mm in places where it arguably doesn’t make any sense. I could see the justification for doing math maybe, but like, that defeats the whole point of it being metric no?
Why is that defeating the whole point of being metric? If you know someone is 183 cm tall, you also know that they are 1.83 m tall. If its easier to say the length in cm, you do. No need for “one meter and eighty-three centimeters” or “one point eighty-three meters”, just “a hundred and eighty-three centimeters”. Often you just skip saying the “centimeters” part as well, because most people can see that you’re not the size of a skyscraper without getting a ruler out.
yeah idk, i guess it’s just weird to me, because here in the us if you measured someones height in inches alone, you would be chased out of a room. We strictly use feet and inches, and then yards if referring to a more “broad” range. So you can very safely assume something is in feet and inches if its just two numbers stuck together.
I feel like i could very easily get confused with metric if i’m not running a consistent rule for default units. Seems like an easy way to get a random x10 error in there to me.
As you pointed out previously, nobody uses decimeters, so x10 errors are not that common.
i’m just gonna say that the joke here is that it was a 10x error. But that’s retroactive, so.
To me the difference between 200cm and 220 is literally fuck all. You ask me the difference between 4 ft and 6ft and i can pretty quickly tell you.
To you. But you are aware that this is not the case for people (almost the rest of the world) who are using metric, right?
To you. But you are aware that this is not the case for people (almost the rest of the world) who are using metric, right?
i mean i would assume so. But i have no direct reference to what 200cm is other than it’s somewhere about 6ft or 2 yards. something like 6’ 5" i think. I would need to know the height of like 50 other people to be able to make a relative distinction there.
If Fahrenheit is “how people feel” then why are feet useful measurements of height when 90% of people are between 4ft and 6ft?
Those are two different things. Hope this helps.
It doesn’t help at all, it’s being intentionally obtuse. You know what I mean, it’s unhelpful to pretend otherwise and pick a fight over it.
If an argument is being made for one thing, Fahrenheit, it’s not relevant to bring up a different thing. Why is feet a useful measurement? Maybe it’s not, we’re talking about temperature.
Yeah like the metric system has good arguments for why it’s measurements and weights are better, mainly conversion being easier, but for temperature there really isn’t an argument. I would make an argument for Fahrenheit as it gives more precision without having to use decimals which at least in America isn’t a thing for temperature. But those are pretty minor things and I do tend to agree it comes down to what you grew up with.
without having to use decimals
This fear of decimals is a strictly American thing. Celsius achieves more precision with decimals than fahrenheit without decimals. And this American fear of decimals is pretty funny, considering you will happily do advanced fractions as soon as you are doing length measurements.
I don’t mind decimals at all, it’s more that I don’t trust companies to actually deal with supporting decimals when making the switch. Plus the last time I discussed this on Lemmy someone was saying that decimals aren’t even universally used and it might depend on what you get whether you get that precision or not. Either way like the main point of my post was anyways these are minor arguments and at the end of the day there isn’t really a reason to use Celsius vs Fahrenheit.
1cm3 of water weights 1 gr and needs 1 calorie to rise 1ºC.
But calories are now obsolete and the unit is Joules.
i still don’t see how this is intentionally obtuse, feet are a mid point between inches and yards, it just makes sense to break down things over a certain amount to a much more palatable scale. Everyone knows roughly what 1 ft is, and everyone knows roughly what 1 inch is. Paired together you can get a pretty rough and accurate guesstimate of height. I feel like it’s also pretty expected for it to be within the range of 4-6 ft. Most people don’t really measure feet outside of that range, unless you’re doing construction.
humans are a comparatively arbitrary height so i feel like you’re just complaining about the height of humans being weirdly arbitrary? Out of all the systems you could use for height, ft and in is pretty well tuned to the human nature, you’re not gonna do much better.
The only good thing about Fahrenheit is that 69 degrees (20.5 C) is a nice temperature.
a 69°C cup coffee on winter is nice
A cup of lukewarm coffee please.
Edit: my wrong, I thought it was 69°F !
All my excuses
According to James Hoffmann, the ideal temperature to enjoy coffee is between 50°C and 60°C, he may know a thing or two about coffee, and you may think the coffee you drink is hotter that it really is.
Also it’s a 0-100 scale of how hot it is outside, and it requires no prior understanding to use it as such.
The freezing point of water is very important to weather, and requires prior knowledge of the arbitrary number 32.
Is it? Only pure water will actually freeze at 0c. Rain, puddles, lakes, etc aren’t all that pure… And we’re talking about ambient air temps here. The air can be below freezing and it can still rain. And you can get snow/hail above freezing…
Knowing the freezing point is just one factor. Knowing it’s generally around 30F is pretty much always close enough (not that remembering 32 is actually very difficult)
Edit: also water only freezes at 0c if it’s at sea level… I really don’t think 0°=freezing is the huge advantage that celcius stans think it is.
yeah, and let me know how accurate our weather models and prediction systems are. Can you calculate accurately how much the temperature in a specific part of the atmosphere will drop to a large updraft?
What’s that? This is literally an entire career field of study and development? Oh that’s weird.
Also the only real time this is relevant, is when things that have this weird property called thermal mass get below freezing, it’s snowing in 30f weather? That’s not sticking, the ground is too warm. or the sun will literally just melt it even if it is cold enough. Water? You mean that weird thing called like, a lake or river? Those get below freezing, without actively freezing, lakes won’t even drop that much in terms of temperature, aside from the surface level. The surface may freeze, but even that is pretty variable.
Also yes, it’s the arbitrary number of 32, so is literally every number though. We have 2 numbers to remember, you also have 2 numbers to remember, god forbid you have like, a password, or a passcode, or like, a numbers based lock somewhere. Humans have never been known to be good at memorizing short strings of data.
like idk how to tell you this, but, it’s not that big of a deal?
Okay so fahrenheit has a well-defined high and low, but an arbitrary freezing point of one certain chemical. All other chemical freezing points are arbitrary.
Celsius has an arbitrary high and low, but a well-defined freezing point of that same chemical. All other freezing points are arbitrary.
If your motivation is to minimize the amount of arbitrary values you have to memorize, fahrenheit is the clear winner.
The zero C is freezing and 100 C is boiling, so not really arbitrary.
But it’s pretty hard to define a scale that has intuitive, round numbers for everything we might care about.
You’re correct. In a lab setting, 0C and 100C are not arbitrary.
In the weather forecast, they are.
Which ties into your final point, it’s hard to define a scale that is best for everything, which is exactly what I’ve been saying this whole time. Fahrenheit is better for some things, Celsius for others.
The only reason people in this thread are saying otherwise is because for some reason they’ve tied up some significant part of their self-worth into their belief that “lmao DAE fahrenheit bad amirite??1?”, and they mistakenly believe that those of us that understand nuance are trying to belittle or disparage them in some way. I assure you, we are not.
0C and 100C are not arbitrary.
well i mean technically, the only reason they aren’t arbitrary is because the mean something, the numbers arent significant, it’s what they represent, which is the boiling/freezing point of water.
The only reason people in this thread are saying otherwise is because for some reason they’ve tied up some significant part of their self-worth into their belief that “lmao DAE fahrenheit bad amirite??1?”, and they mistakenly believe that those of us that understand nuance are trying to belittle or disparage them in some way. I assure you, we are not.
i’m seeing people put very little thought into the things they’re saying, i just recently posted a comment covering a few of those things in this thread. For some reason europeans seem to just get absolutely brainfucked when presented with the concept of a unit system that isn’t metric, it’s like your literal entire lives are built upon the concept of 0 10 100 scaling, and you can’t consider literally anything outside of it.
Now maybe i’m being a little hyperbolic here, but US peeps pretty well understand that we could just “be using celsius” that’s not really a wacky concept or idea here. Celsius peeps really seem to think that if they had to use fahrenheit, they would probably die from accidental over-consumption of water, somehow. And in their defense, a lot of our shit is kinda fucking weird. But again, it’s really not that bad.
at least, this has been my experience from the various threads i’ve been in on this topic over time.
The 0 in Fahrenheit was based on nothing and the 100F was supposed to be human temperature but it is off by some degrees
The water is not an arbitrary temperature, the weather is water dependant, at 0C the water will freeze and you get snow/ice instead of rain
0°F is when the ocean freezes
100° F was human body temperature, later revised somewhat with better measurements and a decrease of parasites . The average person in those days in London had a slightly higher body temperature than today
0F is not ocean freezing, is the freezing temp of a brine mix that he chose arbitrarily (some think that he chose that temp because it was close to the coldest his town had ever been and he used it to calibrate the scales of his thermometers)
FYI, the ocean freezes at around 28F
Oceans freezing also depends on currents, and mixing of the water from the surface. 28° will freeze water in a room.
This is why often the ocean is not frozen at much lower temperatures.
I’m not at all cognizant of how 0 was decided
It’s not like the weather depends on the boiling point of formaldehyde…
By that logic, Americans should use km/h instead of mph. Going 0-100 is much better than 0-60. For the same reason you keep telling us why Fahrenheit is so much more intuitive.
You can go 100 mph
You guys have a lot of Max 100 zones?
Because in km/h, we got lots of those
Also you calculate acceleration using 0-100 mph?
I didn’t say it was legal.
I think the more common measurement is 0-60 mph, so maybe thats closer to 1-100 in kilometers per hour.
That’s my point.
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I think the highest speed limit I have seen in America is 85mph, which is around 135km/h. Typical highway speed limits though are 65mph, but everyone goes 5-10 over (105-120km/h).
The nice thing about mph is the whole mile a minute at 60mph. Makes it easy to mentally estimate time of arrival.
And 120 kph is 2 km per minute.
but everyone goes 5-10 over
Do police not arrest people for this?
Lol no, you have to be going something like double the speed limit most places to get arrested
You might get a ticket, but almost any judge will throw the ticket out if they write you up for going 5-10 over. Some places will write the ticket anyways in the hopes of making some extra revenue, but generally speaking it’s not a ticket that is worth writing because it’s so easy to get tossed out.
Some places are sticklers about the speed limit, and other minor offenses. If you’re local, you tend to know where they are, either from word-of-mouth or local news. Most places won’t ticket for going 5 mph over because a lot of judges will just throw the ticket out, especially if you come with a receipt saying you had your speedometer calibrated. In seemingly more and more places, 10 mph over is the norm. Some of that’s due to shrinking police forces. Pretty much everywhere, 20+ mph over is considered reckless driving.
What part of the country are you from? IME that’s far from universal. I have gotten pulled for 20+ over in multiple states and it’s often just a warning, if I do get ticketed it’s just a ticket and that’s the end of it:
When I had first gotten my license in CA I got pulled over while doing 105-110 in a 65 mph zone. The cop wrote it up for 99 mph, which was a simple speeding ticket without the option for traffic school. I went to court and the judge knocked it down to a <$200 ticket with traffic school so I didn’t get any points on my record.
85 mph in a 65 is normal in a ton of states, they’d be they’d be writing up people for reckless driving in every other traffic stop if 20 over were the threshold.
Just because they don’t ticket you for it, doesn’t mean it isn’t legally considered reckless. Cops often exercise a bit of discretion when deciding which ticket, if any, to write up. Some people just get out of tickets. I’ve never been that lucky, and I’ve never really driven particularly fast. A quick search suggests reckless is considered 15-over in CA, but I can’t find the specific statute.
To answer your question, I’ve lived all up and down the east coast and TX.
100mph is like, actually kinda spooky though. 100 kmh isn’t spooky. Also 60mph ties nicely into the seconds/minutes/hours time dichotomy, which is fun.
Actually, it’s the other way around. 100 degrees F weather is really hot. Driving 100 MPH is really fast.
In metric we have 40 degrees C weather is really hot, and driving…uhhh… (gets out a calculator)… 160 km/h is really fast.
Uhh and 100 ° C is also really hot.
Plus, 100 km/h is also pretty fast.
100°C is where you shouldn’t touch it anymore and 100 to 120 km/h is the speed limit about everywhere except germany.
TWO HUNDRED AND SEVETY THREE KELVIN I’M FREEZING
Once again… the classic argument of: “Well, I grew up using this system, and I’m used to the system. I have built an internal intuition for how hot and cold the temperature is. I am used to >100 being hot! 40 is not hot!”
Well then. I grew up using celcius and… “IT’S FOURTY FUCKING ONE DEGREES OUTSIDE?” sounds just as hot.
Yeah, I grew up in Fahren-wasteland, but have lived in Celsi-heaven for 7 years. I embraced it, and now when someone says “40 FUCKING DEGREES!!” I know exactly what they’re talking about. It’s hot. You probably don’t have an air con. It’s misery.
The joke
Your head
No… I get it… 41 < 105… I totally agree haha funny joke. I’m just over this debate. Who gives a fuck what temperature scale you use? Just use the one you know. We have conversions for that reason.
No, that’s not it, we’re measuring in incredulity units, which are syllables.
“One hun-dred and se-ven?!” == 6 syllables
“For-ty one?!” == 3 syllables
Also, the first one has more vowel sounds to really draw out to indicate higher levels of I-can’t-even. It sounds only golly-jeepers in Celsius, and much more I’m-so-done-with-this-shit in Fahrenheit.
Ah true.
Yeah, but you can’t argue that adding a whole digit doesn’t make it seem bigger. And take a kid who doesn’t yet know either system. They for sure will think 107 is hotter then 41. That said, I wish everywhere that gave a temp in the US would give both so I could get a better sense of Celsius. Most apps and such let you choose one or the other, but not both.
On the other hand it dilutes the effect of lower values because a lot of them are double digit. 20F, 40F, 60F… all double digit, but wildly varying. On the other hand, with Celsius you get:
- Below 0: There’s ice/snow.
- 0: Things are freezing/thawing (depending on what the temperature was before.
- 10s (Spring): T-shirt weather.
- 10s (Fall): Sweater weather.
- 20s: Nice in the sun.
- 30s: Nice in the shade.
- 40s: THIS IS PUNISHMENT FOR OUR HUBRIS.
I do like 0 as freezing. We should have a new one where 0 is 0C, and 100 is 100F. Or maybe 1000 is 100F so I can get my extra resolution without decimals
I read that as “take that from a kid who doesn’t know either system,” and I was about to say are you living under a rock or something?
I could only wish to be so oblivious. :)
41°C sounds terrifying to me
Where i live it can go up to 53°C in the summer. In summer when there is a streak of very hot days and there’s like a 41°C day, you will hear people out saying " oh, today it’s quite cool, that’s nice!"
At 64°C wax melts. 53 is quite hot.
it’s not about what makes more sense: what makes more sense is what you use everyday and is natural to you. 40+ C is freaking hot because when you experience it, it’s freaking hot. It’s about what the entire rest of the world is using as a standard.
Metric system is best system, no exceptions.
Anything over 40°C is fuckin’ hot, anything under 4°C is fuckin’ cold.
Anything over 31°C on a humid day is torture. As someone without AC, being indoors is the worst. What do you? Play games? Your devices heat up too.
My PC kept my room warm all winter, I now dread the incoming sun. Thank God for AC. Sorry for your loss there sir.
Are ACs not viable for you? I don’t know I could do without one, sounds scary.
I live in the UK, getting an AC is not a matter to be discussed in polite company. Doing so upsets the queen and brings the Yankees to the door.
Yankees are easy to deal with, I certainly don’t want to be the reason her highness turns in her grave.
Betcha the queen had AC.
Her Highness sleeps with her window open, as evidenced by the various night strangers who climb in through her bedroom window for a chat.
you can only be living in a dry as fuck area if your fuckin hot threshold is at 40
Thankfully I am, but I was born and raised on the coast, so I know the pain of a 44°C day at close to 100% humidity.
honestly in most of europe even thirty degrees is fucking hot, here in the nordics 25°C is considered too hot
What annoys me about that phrasing, is that “how water feels” is quite relevant to how humans feel.
The obvious example is that if it’s below 0°C, it starts freezing, which causes slippery sidewalks, snow, dry air, all that stuff.
But just in general having a feeling how much water will evaporate and later precipitate at certain temperatures, and even stuff like how hot beverages and cooking temperatures are, it’s all still relevant for humans…Humans are mostly water. If water boils, then humans will mostly boil too.
The obvious example is that if it’s below 0°C, it starts freezing, which causes slippery sidewalks, snow, dry air, all that stuff. But just in general having a feeling how much water will evaporate and later precipitate at certain temperatures, and even stuff like how hot beverages and cooking temperatures are, it’s all still relevant for humans…
that’s an interesting idea, BUT, the boiling point for water also exists under f as well, it’s just 212 f, which if you want to round for convenience, is 200f. 100f is just about half the boiling point of water.
I guess you celsius folks might be more water pilled than the average US citizen, but it’s not like it’s impossible.
In Celcius water boils at exactly 100°C, and you don’t have to round, and 50°C is exactly half the boiling point of water.
Yes, Celsius users are waterpilled: the whole system is based on the temperature at which water freezes and evaporates at 1 atm pressure.
(You’re just fucking with us right? Like Celsius is has a coarser base unit, and the range applicable to human temperatures are not such pretty numbers, but you can’t be seriously thinking Fahrenheit makes more sense for when we talk about water?)
In Celcius water boils at exactly 100°C, and you don’t have to round, and 50°C is exactly half the boiling point of water.
unless you’re doing literal chemistry, the specific boiling point of the water doesn’t matter, especially for any subjective referential experiences you might have, such as, going outside.
(You’re just fucking with us right? Like Celsius is has a coarser base unit, and the range applicable to human temperatures are not such pretty numbers, but you can’t be seriously thinking Fahrenheit makes more sense for when we talk about water?)
i’m not saying it’s better, i’m just saying you’re having a failure of imagination to conceptualize the usage of the fahrenheit system if you so pleased to use it in such a specific manner, which almost nobody here does. You could still do it though.
Cooking is basically water based chemistry, so it makes a lot of sense to use Celsius.
idk man, there’s a lot of temperatures in cooking that are like, kind of close? Not that close, but like, kind of close. Even then, the one case where i consider it genuinely mattering is boiling water which like, you can just kinda know.
Fahrenheit is literally a German dude making a scale from, “scheiße its chilly outside” to “oh mein gott, its hot out!”
Their friend is a dumbass though.
EDIT: replied to wrong comment
In Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, the number of thieves wasn’t really necessarily 40. The number was likely just chosen because 40 was an exaggerated number, much like when we’d say “I’ve told you a hundred million times”. So 40 as a shorthand for “a huge amount” seems fitting in celcius.
What about 101 Dalmatians?
How did the mother dog (no I’m not gonna use that word) not die?
The puppies did not have the same mother. Cruella had been collecting them from all over the place.
Ohhhhhh… you just cleared up something I believed for 20 years
This fairy tale is collected in a frame story in One Thousand and One Nights. Maybe the number of nights were also exaggerated…
Forty-one sounds insanely hot as an outside temperature if that’s the standard you’re used to. And that’s the thing that the Fahrentards refuse to wrap their head around.
Fahernhaters are always like, “nooo!! 40 degrees is so hot!!” Meanwhile, the fahrenchad’s resting body temperature is nearly 2.5 times hotter. All fahernhaters would die at that temperature.
Ah America, bigger is always a better isn’t it?
In fairness, that isn’t just America. It’s kind of a male thing. Lol
That’s why I only use Kelvin. 314.15 sounds like 3 times more “WTF HOW HOT IS TODAY??!?” than your paltry 107
Fahrenheit is better because 69 is a nice temperature
Celsius is better because 69 is very hot
I present the temperature scale that I made up- the Human Scale (H°)
I thought about the Fahrenheit vs Celsius debate, and I think both have practical uses, however I think combined they could make a very practical scale.
Fahrenheit: while my American sensibilities agree that 100° is a good marker for what % of my patience is used up to cut a bitch, I think a similar place would be the average human body temperature. For this reason, 100°H = 98.6°F . It’s not a perfect match, but it can still give us the satisfaction of “IT’S 100°!?” while having practical implications for medical uses “your body temperature is 102°, 2° warmer than average”.
Celsius: I think this scale makes a ton of sense for colder temperatures. When the thermometer reads 0°, that’s when you can expect snow. For this reason, 0°H = 0°C.
The conversation rates are:
H = (F-32) × 1.5
H= C × 2.7
More precise is
H = (F-32) × 1.501501501…
H = C × 2.7027027027…
While using the freezing point of water and the average human body temperature seem like inconsistent and arbitrary benchmarks, my goal is less about consistency and more about practicality for everyday use.
Now watch this scale grow as big as Esperanto.
This… Is actually a pretty good idea.
There’s a few meme images around that Celsius is how water “feels” and Fahrenheit is how people feel (and Kelvin is how atoms feel), which isn’t entirely off base…
But frankly, I would support human scale more than Fahrenheit. I live in a country with Celsius, and my only real gripe with it is that whole degrees are not very precise. You have to go to half-degrees, or even 1/10th of a degree to get reasonable precision on temperature.
Just seems like the human scale would work well for 90% of use cases, aside from science where we should be using either Celsius or Kelvin.
I believe the Fahrenheit scale was originally set up for 100° to be human body temperature. We’re just built colder now I guess? I had to look up what zero was and apparently he originally set it at the coldest the air had ever been around his village, but later had to standardize it and so cooked up some brine that froze at 0°.
I would propose that 100 should be calibrated around the wet bulb temperature, which I think is around 105°F but varies with humidity. That’s the temperature where sweating doesn’t cool you off any more, so any temperature 100 or more is deadly to most people. I like 0 being freezing for water, seems sensible and is also a good “prolonged exposure to this or lower will kill you” cutoff point.
I heard it was supposed to be human body temperature, but they used horse body temperature instead because it was close to human body temperature but more… stable.
Straight to jail with you
This is great! It’s gonna be as big as The Swatch .beat!
the problem is that the average body temperature is slowly decreasing, so this isn’t that well defined, we would need to link it to an event that is at constant temperature
also the celsius scale isn’t that good imo because it’s about the freezing and boiling of water at ambient pressure so it isn’t universal
I say we set the boltzmann constant to a known value, and define temperatures from there
after that we find a range of temperature with useful round values and offset the scale for everyday use
So I had to look up the Boltzmann constant and… That’s a lot of math.
I think you have a point on the decreasing human temperature. It looks like the decrease is at 0.05°F every decade, which actually is quite a bit. If it was something like 0.005°F, I’d say that that’s a problem for the people of the year 2500 to solve.
That said, the reason it’s been decreasing seems to be due to medical advances and not some change in the Earth’s gravity or climate change. I would be surprised to see humans in the year 2500 having an average body temperature of 72.9°F, or closing in on 0°F in the year 3,984. I imagine there will be fluctuations, but there’s got to be a lower limit to what is physically possible.
I’d still defend the Celsius number, since even though there are changes due to air pressure, it’s changing over space and not time. In the year 2500, water at sea level will still freeze at 0°C.
I think my big thing is I’m less concerned about a logically consistent scale, and more towards a scale that’s geared to the emotional side of temperature.
Thinking outloud moment
If we are going for the emotional side of temperature specifically, we would also need to factor in wind, humidity, sunlight, what season it is, etc. and that’s a lot of variables, and even then that’s how you get the wind-chill factor. But even that is almost completely subjective. I feel like that scale would go from “IT’S GOTTA BE NEGATIVE A MILLION FUCKIN’ DEGREES” to “I FEEL LIKE IM ON THE SURFACE OF THE SUN, so like a bazillion degrees” and then we go to the traffic report.
Either way, it’s not a perfect scale, but I’d still take that over the other two.
