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posted by martyb on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:49PM   Printer-friendly
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 ?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:03PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:03PM (#545475)

    Above 200°F, right? So what's the advantage of the Fahrenheit scale?

  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:38PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:38PM (#545521) Journal

    For hot water, the Fahrenheit temperatures would be written with three digits before the decimal. In Celsius, they'd be written with two digits before the decimal. Suppose you had a three-digit readout with a decimal point. Then you could read it to the nearest 0.1 degree Celsius or the nearest 1 degree Fahrenheit. If you had a four-digit readout with a decimal, you could read to the nearest 0.01 Celsius or the nearest 0.1 Fahrenheit: the Celsius scale can show smaller increments in those scenarios.

    Above 200°F, right? So what's the advantage of the Fahrenheit scale?

    If you go much above 200F, you're going to be hitting three digit temperatures in Celsius too. So you lose the decimal, and once again Fahrenheit can be displayed with more precision. So across the range from -70C to 540C, the only places where Celsius gives more precision with the same number of digits are within ~40C to 100C or -10C to 10C. Granted, 40C to 100C is a pretty common range, works well for brewing tea or something...but not for ovens or roasting or anything like that, and also not really for outdoor temperatures as 40C would be right at the top end of the scale.

    Of course, you've also gotta consider the tolerances on the equipment. Just because it displays to the nearest digit doesn't mean it's actually measuring with that much accuracy/precision. I suspect arguing about the precision of fractional degrees is pretty pointless really...