So every time the Celsius Fahrenheit debate comes out, there is always the point made about “Fahrenheit makes more sense, it tells you how is out there: 0 is freezing, 100 is roasting hot”.
And yes, that might be accurate but showcases that USA citizens only care about themselves, they do not even care about physics or chemistry.
The “it works for me therefore it is good” mentality is what they bring to the world and the most clear example is their choice of framing for justifying Fahrenheit over Celsius.
Yes, that’s what’s causing all the issues in the Untied States. The gun violence. The fascism. The failure to prevent an unrepentant criminal from seizing power. The for-profit prisons incentivizing locking up the innocent. The thugs being sent into the streets to terrorize citizens. It’s all because of how temperature is measured.
Scientifically, Celsius has no more merit than Fahrenheit. Either use Kelvin on the daily or get off your high horse. Knowing 0C and 100C as important water temperatures isn’t special when your preferred air temperature is 24C, a value no more natural than 32F being the freezing point of water.
You get used to whatever system you use.
Even Kelvin is an arbitrary system. 0 being absolute 0 has a scientific basis but the size of the degree increments is arbitrary and chosen based on the Celsius system
In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade - which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.
–Josh Bazell, Wild Thing
I’ll just set fire in a barrel of oil and pump water into it. That’ll give you all the steam you need.
furckin scientists, trying to calcurlate and egg-head-time everthing.
That makes absolute zero sense
0 Kelvin
It did to me in the shower.
What was the water temperature?
I think in your first paragraph, you meant Celsius? With the 0-100 comment.
Anyway, is not really being selfish, it’s that most people don’t know or don’t understand what they’ve not been taught, and an argument could be made that "it’s too difficult"to switch. Same reason we have MPH not Km/h, 12 inches = Foot vs CM or M. Or pounds (Lbs) not kilograms.
I would love to adopt that system as its more intuitive to understand.
I also like the argument of 13 months at 28 days each for a solid Sunday - Saturday approach. Yes, that only = 364 days, which leaves 1 extra each year plus leap year. I day those are called bonus days, where everything is truly shut down for a time to be together, rest, enjoy, etc. Don’t make it a big holiday where travel is involved as that requires fuel stations to remain open or grocery stores to operate. Anything like emergency services and whatnot get paid 3x holiday pay not just 2x.
OK one last thing. Fix the goddamn month names!!! September should be 7, October =8th, etc. But somewhere along the lines I think we added July and August so those got pushed out of sync two months and so December meaning 10 is more 12 lol. But we all go along with it because of tradition and history. Not stubbornness or selfishness.
Edited a lot of words
Storyteller should be 7, October =8ty, etc. But somewhere along the lines I think we’re aged July and August so those got pushed out of sync two months and so December meaning 10 is more 12 lol.
Good god, how did you go so far off the rails here? Storyteller? We’re aged July and August? I know what you’re fumbling towards, but that’s only because I already know how the calendar got so out of whack.
Oh, dude, my bad!! I’ve switched keyboards for swipe and sometimes don’t fully proofread everything bc I forget it’s not accurate.
Fixed. Storyteller, idk how, but should’ve been September 😖 fixed the others too.
0K then.
Metric zero or imperial zero?
I would not agree that Fahrenheit is what is wrong with the USA but the jingoistic opposition to metricization is probably a symptom of delusional American exceptionalism, which does hit closer to the mark.
One thing dumber than Americans still using Fahrenheit is non-Americans being obsessed with Americans still using Fahrenheit
Canada uses both systems. The temperature outside is reported in Celsius but my oven temperatures are in Fahrenheit
Fahrenheit was literally devised by a physicist, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, a European, mind you.
It was based on physical properties, too. Originally 0 was the freezing point of a replicable water solution, and 96 was set at human body temperature (96 used as it made dividing a thermometer easier). It was later recalibrated to put boiling at 212, 180 degrees from freezing, but that’s the original basis.
There is no god-ordained rule that states that 0 has to be the freezing point of water, nor 100 the boiling point.
Fahrenheit also has an inherent advantage to Celsius in that for every 5 degrees C there are 9 degrees F. There is more inherent precision.
My proposed compromise: we should have a system with 0 at freezing point but the same sized degree increments as Fahrenheit, so boiling point would be 180
In metric, we aren’t scared of using a decimal if we have to. Our thermometers can be as precise as we need them.
Yet weather reports rarely include them.
…because we don’t need them.
You go if you want to be precise as Fahrenheit is without decimals.
Weather forecasts are only accurate to 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 1 degree Celsius. So the only example you’ve given where Fahrenheit is “superior” is one where the accuracy is so low that we just shrug and give a number in the middle of the range. This doesn’t make using Fahrenheit more accurate, this just makes the scale irrelevant and we use a whole number because having a convention where we skip some would be pointless.
As for being more precise without decimals, I live in a country with half-decent education standards, so decimals and fractions don’t scare me.
It isn’t about being “scared” of them, it is about them being used.
And we don’t just make forecasts, we report actual temperatures.
But whatever, you just want an air of superiority.
Actual historical temperature data is recorded in tenths of a degree Celsius, because full degrees, Celsius or Fahrenheit, aren’t accurate enough. They still aren’t reported in the media, because they don’t matter in an everyday context.
Look, as far as imperial measurements go, Fahrenheit is pretty good. Any temperature scale is going to be arbitrary, and the reasons for Fahrenheit are valid enough. But, frankly, 180 divisions of temperature is nonsensical. The accuracy just isn’t necessary in daily life, and isn’t enough from a scientific context. And if I’m going to use an arbitrary scale, I may as well use the same one as just about all the other ones that don’t have some reason to be divided into multiple different segments, like degrees on a circle. So at that point, you can go decimal, like virtually everything else in the metric system, or you can go with a multiple of 60 for no damned reason besides history.
Celsius is based on water. 0ºC is freezing, 100ºC is boiling. Water is a good metric to go on, but it’s not very good for conveying to humans what is hot and what is cold, because even though we are made up of a lot of water, 0-100ºF is a scale that makes more sense to us. The equivalent in Celsius is something like -15 to something like 45ºC. And that makes less sense.
I’m a huge advocate of metric everywhere, but to say Celsius is objectively better than Fahrenheit is kind of silly.
They’re both based on water, but Fahrenheit has a backstory.
The first iteration was designed by Ole Rømer. Rømer, an astronomer, liked working in 60s, so he defined a temperature scale where 0° was the coldest day in winter and 60° was the boiling point of water*. Due to historical accident of when Rømer made his minimum temperature measurement, the freezing point of water was defined as 7.5°.
Daniel Fahrenheit didn’t like this; he though the freezing point of water should be an integer. So he slightly modified Rømer’s scale, making the degrees a hair smaller. 0° remained the same, but in the Fahrenheit temperature scale, water freezes at 8° and boils at 64°*.
(Side note: Rømer and Fahrenheit used ice-ammonia mixtures to calibrate their thermometers, but those were not used to define 0°, contrary to popular belief).
Fahrenheit’s early thermometers used alcohol, but he later started using mercury for more accurate instruments. Because mercury expands more than alcohol with the same temperature change, he invented a new scale in which the degrees were 1/4 the magnitude of his previous effort. In Fahrenheit’s mercury scale, water freezes at 32° and boils at 256°*.
…but some time after that, it turned out that Rømer’s original measurement of the boiling point of water was off by a lot (hence the asterisks in the above paragraphs). The actual difference between the freezing and boiling points if water was not 224°, but 180° (no doubt this would have pleased Rømer). The magnitude of a degree remained the same, but the actual boiling point of water turned out to be 212°.
And now you know.
Right, Celsius is not even part of the metric system. It is an honorary member of the SI units, but that doesn’t make it metric. It would make little sense to talk about kilo-degrees, or micro-degrees, because degrees Celsius doesn’t relate well to the amount of heat. That’s what Kelvin is for.
Fahrenheit is British ya Dingus.
He was a German scientist in Poland, actually.
But it came to the US by way of the British, therefore it’s British for the purposes of this.
The metric system is French
Je ne parle pas français.
I would personally put excessive gun ownership and exaggerated desire to make use of them above Fahrenheit. The current administration as well. Obesity and addiction to opioids also, come to think of it. And I have a feeling I’m forgetting a few other issues.
You could make an argument that the cultural undertones of hardcore individualism and striving for selfish monetary success lie at the bottom of a lot of those issues. And maybe a desire to want to go their own way informed the opposition to Celsius and the metric system as a whole. I would not make this choice the poster boy for what’s wrong with the US though.
Both temperature scales are made up. Both are workable. Both come from Europe. Where if it wasn’t for enlightenment, the French Revolution, and Napoleon (events far away from the New World) we might still also measure in cubits, pounds, and regional tworps. Horses are still measured in hands, deer in points (I think, not sure about that one). The Brits still delight us with mph speed limits on their motorways and body weight measured in stones. Worldwide the more commonly used calories are a member of team imperial, not metric. Bicycles and screen sizes are more commonly measured in inches in Europe as well. Celsius had put 0° as the boiling point of water initially so we’re all using it wrong, I say with tongue very much in cheek. The US opposition to going full metric is a bit dumb but not unique at all. The Japanese measure apartments in tatami mat sizes.
What’s intetesting about the US imperial system of measurements is that if you scratch under the surface it is mostly if not all of it propped up by the metric system. Lawful definitions of how long an inch is and how hot 98.6 °F is are expressed in terms of the metric system as the worldwide standard. So they are at the core fully metric, they just don’t know about it.
Measurements are a social construct
I’m American and I use Celsius. I don’t talk to anyone about the weather so I use the one I like.
Yawn.
Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of.
OK, you don’t like the US. That’s all you had to say.
And even THAT is tiresome. Get a new shtick.
Oh, yea, what country are you from? Yea, we don’t give a fuck about you.
And that’s the real issue right there - you’re like an angry ex-girlfriend.
Oh, yea, Celsius is as arbitrary as Fahrenheit - it’s based on the boiling point of water at sea level on the earth. There’s nothing universal about that.
The entire metric system is as human centric as anything else. Funny how some integral of universal constants were chosen to represent the exact same units that we already had.
You metric sycophants crack me up (and I use both metric and ACU every day).
We are literally made out of water, mate, that was the whole point: Celsius is based on the most important thing that keeps us alive.
Hot take: Zero should be at the point of maximum density, which is 3.98°C. That’s arguably one of its most important properties for the evolution of life as we know it.
It’s stupid that we still aren’t on the metric system.
Celsius isn’t part of the metric system.
Seems like I have pissed off many of you. Not my intention but not undesirable either.
If I had to guess, it’s probably less about pissing people off and more about your use of common logical fallacies (ex: straw man) and/or the click-baity title. If only there were an eye roll button you’d have been spared some of these folks’ opinions and down votes. But then I presume that’s the point – engagement.
I disagree with you but don’t worry about the downvoters. There is a certain subset of fediverse users who will downvote anything remotely against their views no matter how banal the statement is.
So a justifiable and logical argument to how humans feel cold and heat in the temperature scale debate is selfish? 🧐
Not saying that I side with F over C or vise versa, but that’s a weird conclusion you’ve drawn.
