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from the There's-nothing-hotter-than-ITS-90 dept.
At face value, measuring the temperature using Celsius instead of Fahrenheit seems to make sense. After all, the freezing point of water in Celsius is a perfect 0 degrees C — not that inexplicable 32 degrees, as in Fahrenheit. Also, the boiling point of water in Celsius is right at 100 degrees (Okay, 99.98, but what's a couple hundredths of a degree among friends?), instead of the awkward 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
But Fahrenheit may be the best way to measure temperature after all. Why? Because most of us only care about air temperature, not water temperature.
Celsius is great for measuring the temperature of water. However, we're human beings who live on dry ground. As a result, it's best to use a temperature gauge that's suited to the air, as opposed to one that's best used for water. This is one reason why Fahrenheit is superior.
Fahrenheit is also more precise. The ambient temperature on most of the inhabited world ranges from -20 degrees Fahrenheit to 110 degrees Fahrenheit — a 130-degree range. On the Celsius scale, that range is from -28.8 degrees to 43.3 degrees — a 72.1-degree range. This means that you can get a more exact measurement of the air temperature using Fahrenheit because it uses almost twice the scale.
A precise reading of temperature is important to us because just a little variation can result in a perceivable level of discomfort. Most of us are people who are easily affected even by even slight changes in the thermometer, and the Fahrenheit scale is more sensitive to those changes.
It seems the author is saying that nobody uses fractions of degrees in day-to-day life, so Fahrenheit is a better scale because it has smaller increments. I'm not sold on this, because you'll get the same temperature variation within a room whether you set your air-conditioning system to 21°C or 70°F, and people will complain that they prefer the room to be a bit warmer/cooler/whatever.
Does anyone here have another reason for advocating the continued use of the Fahrenheit scale ?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:19PM (17 children)
european over here.
I love making fun of USA citizens for using Fahrenheit, I actually went over the line into asshole territory a couple of times about it (and I'm not proud of that).
However, it is just a convention.
I will always argue for Celsius over Fahrenheit because the 100 degrees difference between freezing and boiling are roughly consistent with the factors of 10 used for the SI (international system of units, i.e. meter, kilometer, etc).
To me, Celsius also helps with intuition of negative numbers ("look outside. do you see ice? it's below 0"), and as far as personal comfort is concerned, I always dress according to a plus/minus 3 centigrade range because the temperature will vary throughout the day, so i find the "more refined" statement to be bullshit.
But I've lived in the US for four years, and I've seen that people can very easily associate freezing to a positive number (most people round it to 30), and in general everything works just fine.
All measurement units are arbitrary*.
I'd say money should be spent on increasing the general scientific literacy of the population (in the US as well as the rest of the world), and when that's solved we can worry about measurement units.
For practical purposes, I think Fahrenheit is just like qwerty keyboards: not ideal, but good enough. Due to various historical reasons, Celsius (also good enough), is actually used more than Fahrenheit --- unlike the case with the Dvorak layout, which is not at all common. But there's already serious investment in using Fahrenheit in the US, and people don't want to buy new thermometers etc. I would argue that new thermometers should be Celsius, but I don't think it's worthwhile having the debate in the first place.
*yes, you can use atomic units, and you can set lightspeed to 1, etc. and those would be non-arbitrary, and universal, but it would be a drag to go to the farmer's market and be required to do multiplications and divisions with 26 digit numbers...
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Thursday July 27 2017, @08:36PM (14 children)
See, I live where 0C is an unimportant temperature - the weather here never gets within shouting distance of it. 100F, however, is our distinction between "pleasant in the shade" and "too warm even in the shade" (and 110F is where we start calling it "hot") (Local joke: Only in Phoenix would a forecast of 108F be called a "cooling trend"). So for me, the Farenheit scale has a convenient milestone, where Celsius doesn't. I match your anecdote with one of my own.
Fahrenheit is nice in that 1F changes in air temperature are noticeable - changing a room from 76F to 75F can bring it into the comfort zone for more people. 1F is also a nice increment for a Jacuzzi - 100F on mine is warm but not quite relaxing, 101F is marvelous, and 102F means that I can only stay in for 10 minutes or so before I start to overheat. On the Celsius scale, I either have to have 0.5C increments on the respective thermostats, or give up the fine tuning of temperature.
Other than that, I really don't care. I'm an old fahrt now so it'd take me awhile to get comfortable with metric in everyday life, but I'd deal with the change. I'm an engineer, so I'm perfectly comfortable operating in metric for science/engineering work, but I have no gut feel for how much hamburger to buy if I'm grilling for six people (1.5 pounds in the USA), or whether I'm overweight at 100 Kilos. Yes, I can do the conversions in my head, but that's a lot of work. Jimmy Carter had the right idea - just make the change and quit complaining about it - but he was so unpopular in some circles that resistance to metrication was de rigueur.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:09PM (9 children)
I agree about Fahrenheit being more fine-grained. My car has digital automatic climate control, which can be set to C or F. With F, it's easy: there's just two digits. I usually set mine to somewhere between 68 or 73, but each degree is noticeable. But in Celcius mode, the thing actually has half-degree increments, so it looks rather ridiculous with numbers like 22.0, 21.5, etc. The extra digit makes you think it should have 0.1 degree resolution, but of course it doesn't, it's only 0.5 degrees (which makes sense, 0.1 degree is too small to be noticeable, but visually the UI is lousy because of this).
Honestly, I'd rather just dump Celcius altogether. It's not a very good scale. Fahrenheit is good for measuring temperatures that humans actually live in (air or water), and if you're doing scientific work, you're going to use Kelvins, not Celcius.
The entire argument for Celcius seems to come down to "we've all adopted this completely arbitrary and not-that-useful standard, so everyone needs to adopt it! You guys who are holding out suck because you're not jumping on the bandwagon!" It kinda reminds me of the dumb UK electrical standards, where they have a gigantic wall plug with a built-in fuse for every device, and no separate circuit breakers in a central box the way it's done in other countries, so you're relying on every device to have a proper working fuse, and if a device is faulty (with a bypassed fuse) you can have a fire. Just because a group of people decide to make something a standard doesn't mean it's a good idea. Another example is probably the Intel x86 instruction set. Imagine if ARM had been required to replicate that because "it's the standard!" instead of making their own ISA. Or if everyone had to use Windows, including on servers and mobile devices. Or all programs had to be written in COBOL.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:15PM
I *personally* like F instead of C. However, that is only because I grew up with it. I do not want to spend the time relearning something that really only affects 'do I wear a jacket or shorts'.
It is a convention. If I grew up with C instead of F I would be saying I like it that way. All to answer the question "is it hot/cold out". It is just a number. The 'range' means something to me because that is what I learned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:32AM
That's more a case of shitty design, I've never heard anyone outside a Lab/Workshop use/quote a fractional 'Celsius' temperature.
Err, we do have '..separate circuit breakers in a central box the way it's done in other countries', the fuse in the plug is only there to protect the cable betwixt wall socket and device, it's a fire prevention device which is supposed to 'blow' to prevent the cable melting/catching fire in the case of short circuits.
Want a real flame war?, Lob Celsius vs Centigrade into a conversation in the UK (don't know about France, they might be funny about it as well)
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday July 28 2017, @06:40AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday July 28 2017, @03:43PM (5 children)
They have that crazy "how many liters does it take to drive this completely arbitrary 100km" measurement in Britain too, instead of miles/gallon or kilometers/pint or whatever. As if anybody figures out "what is the smallest amount of gas I could top off to get there."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday July 28 2017, @03:46PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles#Units_of_measure [wikipedia.org]
Well fuck me. Apparently the madness is spreading.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday July 28 2017, @04:28PM
Yeah, I never really liked that L/100km measure either. I can understand why they don't use mpg in places where they don't use gallons or miles, but what's wrong with km/L? The usual excuse is that the L/100km measure gives you a lower number for lower fuel economy, and vice-versa, whereas the mpg and km/L measures are inverted, but honestly, is that really so hard to understand? Besides, for many qualitative measures, we humans seem to like systems where higher numbers are better. Low is bad, high is good... and mpg and km/L work that way.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday July 28 2017, @09:41PM (2 children)
Well, Europeans usually drive to some destination, which is a fixed distance away independent of the fuel consumption of your car, and then the question is how much fuel you need for that distance (and if the fuel in your tank is sufficient). Apparently Americans prefer to drive until they have consumed a certain amount of fuel, and then are interested in how far they get this way. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @12:57AM (1 child)
The European system there makes very little sense. It's only a fixed distance if you've got enough gas in the tank to make it there. The American way makes a lot more sense as you simply multiply the number of gallons in the tank by your typical fuel efficiency and that tells you when to expect to have to fill up. Or, you divide the distance by the miles per gallon which tells you how many gallons you'll need to get there.
But, realistically, most people know roughly how far they can go on a tank of gas. My Subaru gets a bit over 200 miles per tank without having to worry about running out of gas. My motorcycle gets about the same. So, I know that in either vehicle if I'm driving 500 miles, I'll probably have to stop 3 times for gas.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday July 29 2017, @05:59AM
What? Last I checked, geography didn't change depending on the filling of your gas tank.
In case you are referring to the trip to the filling station: That is a negligible correction. Indeed, in the majority of cases there will already be one on your way, so the extra way is just a few meters.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:25PM (2 children)
The US is a messy half metric, half English nation. I've seen food labels announcing mg of salt per ounce of liquid. Milk comes in gallons, soft drinks in liters. Need SAE wrenches for classic cars, metric for modern cars.
I am used to F, and I find increments of 10F very convenient. 70F-79F is comfortable. 90F and above is too hot, and below 60F is too cold. Have to use increments of 5C for a rough equivalent, which is not as nice, though still quite workable. Then the comfortable temperature range is 20C-25C.
But if 0.5 and 5 are so bad, why don't we switch speedometers from mph to kph, and have all our speed limits divisible by 10 kph? And why not change all the mile markers on interstates to kilometer markers? Would cut down on having to give two or more exits the same number followed by 'A', 'B', and even 'C' to distinguish them. Actually a few interstates are marked in km. Think all the interstates in Alabama are km, which I find astonishing. Alabama is part of the deep south, notorious for being very conservative and backwards, yet they marked their interstates in km?? Then there's I19 in Arizona, which is marked in km, probably because it connects to Mexico and it may be more Mexicans than Americans use it.
(Score: 1) by WillR on Friday July 28 2017, @01:54PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Lester on Saturday July 29 2017, @11:24AM
And carat for gems. And year-ligths or UA in astronomy. And Horse Power in motors.
For historical reasons or convenience, some activities use certain units. No problem as long as everybody uses always the same unit. There are some problems when you cross the boundaries of the activity, but inside the activity it is consistent.
The same for Fharenheit. They are restricted to USA, as long as you don't cross its boundaries, it is consistent. The problem is that nowadays, with easy communications, geographic boundaries are crossed often. The Fharenheit are there for historical reasons, defending it in the grounds of convenience, they are better in anyway than celsius, is absurd.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @06:12AM
0C is still relevant for your refrigerator and freezer.
(Score: 2) by infodragon on Friday July 28 2017, @01:30PM (1 child)
in F...
100 is too hot
70 is very nice
50 is cold
32 is frozen
less than 0, your nose hair freezes
In C.
38 is too hot
21 is very nice
10 is cold
0 is frozen
less than -18 your nose hair freezes
In the human brain F is better than C! C++ is better than C as well!
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 2) by Lester on Saturday July 29 2017, @10:59AM
In C
40 Very hot
35 hot
30 a little uncomfortable
25 Ok
20 is very nice
10 is cold
0 is frozen
less than -20, your nose hair freezes
In F
104 Very hot
86 a little uncomfortable
95 hot
77 Ok
68 is very nice
50 is cold
32 is frozen
less than -4, your nose hair freezes
In the human brain C is better than F !!
And Km better than miles. i.e. this traffic sign [wikipedia.org] means speed limit 100 Km/h, that is 62.13 mi/h, thus mile traffic signs must be less clear.
Except the freezing point of water, you have chosen arbitrary numbers, approximations in Fahrenheit that a human brain can remember easier, and later you have converted to Celsius. I have done the same, but the other way around.
We, in celsius world, also use easy to remember numbers. No surprise. We, human, if accuracy is not needed, round to easy to remember numbers, no matter whether they are celsius, Fahrenheit , Km, miles, dollars or euros.