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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: -1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:57PM (9 children)
n/t
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:57PM (7 children)
One thing Celsuis has guoing for it is its easier to spell. Almost as easy as Calvin.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:19PM (3 children)
Apparently easier to spell than going as well!
(Score: 4, Touché) by Zyx Abacab on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:34PM (2 children)
So we're not going to address the elephant in the room, then? :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:41PM
What's the best temperature at which to play Clavin-ball?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:43PM
Maybe he was trying to spell "Celsuis".
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 28 2017, @05:32AM (2 children)
Not to mention Kelvin.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @06:14AM (1 child)
(thatsthejoke)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @09:02AM
You misspelled Whoosh. ;-)
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday July 28 2017, @01:13PM
Yeup, that's how often I (submitter) use or write Fahrenheit.
My thanks to your Eagle eyes, and the actions of the editors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:59PM (4 children)
And, it goes all the way to 11! Spinal Tap!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:10PM (3 children)
wtf is a stonehedge?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:31PM
About £12. Won't let you in with Euros, sorry, Brexit and all.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @08:06PM
According to wiki: [wikia.com] Stone Hedge is a castle in the Riverlands. It is the seat of House Bracken, a vassal house holding fealty to House Tully of Riverrun. The castle is located east of Riverrun, south of the Red Fork of the Trident.[1][2]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:13PM
At least it is not Fairlyheight or Hobbes and Calvin playing with the Cel(esita)cuis! And it coulda benn wurst! Could of bein "Stonehinge" On stage. Cue the smoke machine. Turn the amps up to Eleven!
(Score: 2) by rondon on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:02PM (42 children)
I think Fahrenheit does a better job of capturing the current air temperatures in comfortable numbers for people. So much of our number system is optimized for the 0-100 range, which is the temps most people live in. -10 to 40 feels sub optimal by comparison. Of course, I like Celsius better for science (which maybe ought to be in Kelvin?), so what do I know?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:17PM (12 children)
I don't understand what you mean by "our number system is optimized."
BTW In Phoenix right now it's 105°F or 41°C [weather.gov]
(Score: 2) by rondon on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:22PM (9 children)
I did a poor job of phrasing there. I meant that our system of presenting numbers is often optimized for values from 0 to 100. One example is percentages, which are nearly always presented in that form. Another would be cash, which is denominated in bills from 1 to 100. It seems like humans have a propensity to use that scale more often than others, except for maybe the 1 to 10 scale, which 1 to 100 is simply a more precise representation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:35PM (1 child)
I'm not that dumb I can tie my own shoes.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:32PM
But I can fuck your bitch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:54PM (4 children)
The Celsius scale was originally designed with 0 degrees as the boiling point of water and 100 degrees for the temperature of melting ice (it's now the reverse). The Fahrenheit scale was originally designed [straightdope.com] with 32 degrees as the temperature of melting ice and 96 degrees as human body temperature (it's now based on a melting point of 32 degrees and a boiling point of 212 degrees for water). "Zero was the temperature of a mix of ice, water, and ammonium chloride....100 means nothing on the Fahrenheit scale, 96 used to mean something but doesn't anymore, and 0 is colder than it ever gets in Denmark."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @12:47AM (3 children)
96 is a great number because it's 3 times 32 and there's a ton of factors. That's somewhat less important in modern times with so much easy access to computational power that it's not an issue. But it's quite nice when doing math in your head.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday July 28 2017, @09:31PM (2 children)
Except than doing multiples of non-absolute temperature values, no matter whether Celsius, Fahrenheit, Reaumur or whatever, does not make the slightest sense, therefore divisibility of temperatures doesn't matter.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @12:46AM (1 child)
Sure it does, it makes precisely as much sense as taking multiples of absolute temperature values. If you want to estimate how long you need to let boiling water sit out until it's cool enough for brewing tea, you would be doing multiplication with non-absolute temperatures.
Granted, people don't usually do that, but it's a reason why having nice numbers is nice.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday July 29 2017, @06:24AM
You won't let your water cool down from body temperature to the freezing point of water for making tea, so for your "use case" the divisibility of the temperature difference between those two values is irrelevant.
Not to mention that the cooling process is driven be the temperature difference between the water and the surrounding (which depending on the circumstances may be more divisible in either scale).
Also note that the ideal brewing temperature is actually a temperature range, so in both scales, you can just pick a number from your range that eases your calculation.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:05PM
Perhaps that's because it's from the Latin per centum, which literally means [thefreedictionary.com] "one one-hundredth part" or "on the basis of a rate/proportion per hundred".
For counterexamples, we have human weight, with pounds ranging approximately from 0 to ~200+, kg 0 to 90, stone 0 to 14, with higher values for fat somewhat larger than average people.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday July 28 2017, @01:37PM
Here's my take on it all [fyngyrz.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:56PM (1 child)
No, Fahrenheit is correct for Phoenix too.
The simple rule with Fahrenheit is: if it's below 0 or above 100, it's too extreme for humans to live in. Which means the Phoenix is uninhabitable for part of the year. Does it really matter if it's 110 or 118? No, either one is much too hot to be outside.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:55PM
But people can survive in below-zero and above-100 temperatures just fine. Unless you mean those are temps where people die of exposure, in which case you're wrong, it's more like 45 to 110
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:57PM (6 children)
Celsius / Fahrenheit Debate. Hold on a sec till I get the popcorn!!!
Pretty much true.
People don't deal well with decimals, until machines are handling the numbers.
Humans deal best with one or two digit numbers they can carry in their head.
One digit temperatures were too imprecise, three digits too much precision for every day use.
Time, Money, Temperatures, Weights, and Volumes, virtually all everyday measurements, are all arbitrarily set up to accommodate this human limitation / preference.
I maintain Neither scale was optimized. They just happened to choose two different and equally arbitrary start and end points.
This concept of Fahrenheit's "precision" might make sense in an analog world. Once you go digital, there is no reason for the bias.
There was only so much precision to be had with the tools THEN at hand OR in the human mind.
Nobody worries about decimal places when dealing with temperatures in everyday life. Regardless of scale.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @08:03PM
> They just happened to choose two different and equally arbitrary start and end points.
They're both defined by the melting point of ice and the boiling point of water.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @12:44AM (4 children)
The only reason there's still an argument about this is because of snooty Eurotrash. Celsius is great for scientific research and the like, it's terrible for use by humans for weather.
Celsius was defined based upon the range from frozen water ice to boiling water. Both are at sea level, so, if you're not at sea level the measures make little sense and it puts body temperature at an awkward point roughly midway between the two, but not really half way either, making it completely intuitive. People who live under the tyranny of the metric system eventually develop a feel for the temperatures, but they do it in spite of the way the system is laid out, not because of it.
People judge temperature relative to their own body temperature when they don't have a thermometer. And they decide whether or not they're comfortable relative to their body temperature. Fahrenheit is great because it's relatively straightforward to compare body temperature to the ambient air temperature.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:07AM (1 child)
So in F you have to remember a number for body temperature and then compare that number to the air temperature.
But in C you have to remember a number for body temperature and then compare that number to the air temperature.
Is it really that much easier to remember 98.6 vs 37?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:15PM
Regardless of what system of measure you use, you always compare back to body temperature when estimating temperature without instruments. What Fahrenheit does that Celsius gets wrong, is it puts the reference point in a place that's convenient.
This whole BS about having to remember things comes up with the metric system all the time and it's not really our fault in America that people in other parts of the world have such bad memory.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday July 28 2017, @03:22PM (1 child)
Gosh, how useless in everyday life to know that things freeze at about 0.
Rather than 32.
How useless in everyday life to know your body temperature should be around 37.
Rather than 99 (and that extra degree can make a big difference).
All these numbers are arbitrary in everyday life. Your coffee is about 95C or 198F, neither make any more sense than the other.
However, when you come to apply it, Fahrenheit has almost no use scientifically except with other units that are even more outdated, underused, and unfamiliar.
In everyday life, they are the same. Hundreds of countries cope just fine knowing nothing more than C, and absolutely nothing about F.
In scientific life, the decision is made. Use SI units if you publish.
If you are going to use one exclusively for science and for everyday life, C wins. Hands down. The decision was already made by the world.
Any sort of random justification like yours is highly dubious to say the least (I can't say I even understand it, or how it's an advantage, to be honest).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:23PM
It's not random, I'm just not an ill-educated hick that believes things that I don't understand.
Most of what you said in this post is complete crap. There's no need for most people to know the boiling and freezing points of water. Most people just put things in the freezer until they're frozen solid or in a kettle until they boil. The specific temperature doesn't much matter. Which is probably why so few people use a thermometer in those cases.
They go through life using Celsius because they were brought up using it and after a great deal of effort figured out how to relate it to their body temperature. But, claiming that this popularity makes it a better measure is rather ridiculous and it just furthers the view that you're not well-educated. Most of those countries use the metric system because they're not significant enough to have other measures available in the things they buy.
BTW, you might want to look up the word hypocrite in the dictionary, because my justifications are far less random and dubious than yours are. I've used both systems and quite frankly Celsius is a huge mess for anything outside of the sciences.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:50PM (19 children)
You're only saying that because you're familiar with the Fahrenheit scale. Celsius captures the current air temperature in comfortable numbers of people (what does that even mean?) quite nicely. If you tell me that it's 24 degrees, I know that it's comfortably warm; summertime would mean that a light breeze wouldn't be unwelcome, but if it's below -30 outside then 24 is very welcome. Tell me that it's 105 and I'd have no clue whether that means I'd be most comfortable wearing a tank-top, a T-shirt or a sweater.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @12:53AM (4 children)
Not really, Fahrenheit was originally designed with human body temperature on one end and frozen water ice on the other. Meaning that you've got one end of the scale positioned in a place that's easier for humans to judge. Literally any time we're judging temperature without an instrument we're comparing it to our body temperature.
With Celsius, body temperature falls awkwardly in the middle of the end points they chose. So, you get the completely un-intuitive 37C as the reference point for those measurements. To make matters worse, those end points were arbitrarily defined in a way that makes no sense if we ever travel to other planets as they're only meaningful on the Earth or a planet with earth-like properties. Fahrenheit though is a human-centric measurement, so it's useful anywhere that humans go, but at a cost of being probably worthless when dealing with aliens if we ever meet any.
The SI system is earth-centric and as a result tends to be great for science. The imperial system is human-centric and tends to be useful wherever humans are using the measures for themselves or judging without tools.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:16AM (1 child)
So your arbitrary planet has humans, but no water? One end of your scale is still water based anyway so just as meaningless.
You know F goes above 100? It's not an end.
You're just used to F because it was indoctrinated into you. It's no more or less easy to judge against without tools than anything else you were brought up with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:29PM
First off, by definition, anywhere we go is going to have humans.
Secondly, Celsius isn't based on the temperature for freezing and boiling water. It's based upon the temperature of freezing and boiling water under specific conditions. A planet that doesn't have the same atmosphere and size isn't going to have the same freezing and boiling points. Even on Earth, if you're up on a tall mountain the difference between 100C and the temperature that things are actually boiling at can be off by several degrees.
It's shocking to me how dead certain you guys are that the SI units are better for daily living and yet are so completely ignorant of how that system works let alone how the imperial measures work. Personally, I know how both systems work and I base my opinion on the fact that the SI units just don't work very well in real life without making a huge number of bastardizations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @09:33AM (1 child)
Riddle me this: Which is the system that clearly most people on earth can handle just fine in their every day life?
That "human-centric" bullshit is just that, bullshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:31PM
Well, I'm convinced, a bunch of former colonies adopted the system used by their former colonizers, so clearly it's the better system.
Well, not really. The pro-SI arguments are so stupid, that the people making them ought to be wearing some sort of helmet so they don't hurt themselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Friday July 28 2017, @01:01AM (11 children)
This is exactly correct.
Hands up all the non-Americans arguing against Celsius.
Thought so.
Lets do the metric system next.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mykl on Friday July 28 2017, @03:40AM (6 children)
No, the next item on the agenda should be why the US date format is mm/dd/yy rather than dd/mm/yy. This is a massive pain in the ass.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:22AM (2 children)
Those both suck. It should be YYYY/MM/DD, so that dates are always sorted in the correct order.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @07:17AM
And "correct" in this sense means "not ambiguous".
(Score: 3, Informative) by unauthorized on Friday July 28 2017, @08:51AM
Incorrect. Dates are human-readable representation of time, indented only for our monkey brains to grasp. dd/mm/yyyy is better for presenting data where many datapoints span the same year or predominantly recent events, where as yyyy/mm/dd is better at presenting data where the year is expected to change a lot (eg only a few datapoints per year, or frequently looking up old records).
Sorting on the other hand is a job for computers who represent dates as naturally sortable timestamps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @09:19AM
Well, it's topped by the standard time format used by date which puts the time and the time zone in between the day and the year: Fri Jul 28 11:17:35 CEST 2017
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:34PM (1 child)
dd/mm/yyyy is the dumbest ordering possible in countries that read from left to right. The only time that it makes sense is if you're writing in a language that goes from right to left.
How many times are you interested in all of the things that happened on the 3rd of every month of a year? I can't recall ever having wanted to know that. I do, however, regularly want to know what happened during a particularly month. Hence, mm/dd/yyyy. Arguably, yyyy/mm/dd is even better as we're usually not interested in what happened during any May, we're interested in one particular May, so moving the year ahead of the month would make a ton of sense.
But, starting it with the day is for tossers, wankers and bollocks jugglers. It makes absolutely no sense other than as a masturbatory nod to the backwards minds in Europe.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday July 31 2017, @04:25AM
By your own argument then, dd/mm/yyyy is superior. The emphasis for the date is in the first part, not the middle.
For example, if you want to know about things that happened in March 2017:
Compare to your version:
In your version, you have to hunt for the most relevant part of the date in the middle of the date, rather than the end. Stoopid.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Friday July 28 2017, @08:16AM (3 children)
First, most of the time, the difference between one degree Fahrenheit is not detectable to a human. One degree centigrade is slightly less than the amount that you'll notice. 25 degrees is definitely warmer than 22 degrees, but 22-23 or 24-25 is not something that you'd notice. At around 20±5 degrees, the difference in perceived temperature due to differences in humidity is more than one degree. This means that, for air temperature in informal use, centigrade gives more precision than is required.
The second is that humans live in places with temperature ranges from about -40 (in either system) up to a bit under 60ºC (140ºF). This means that Fahrenheit needs 3 significant figures to capture that range. If you use 3 significant figures for centigrade, then you're measuring tenths of a degree, which gives you about five times the precision. People may not be comfortable with fractions, but people use decimals all the time in countries that use metric units.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @03:10PM
Speak for yourself. I'm a healthy male, age 57 who walks 1-2 miles daily in the south Texas afternoon heat, you know, for my health.
When the home thermostat is set at 73 (F), I have trouble sleeping because it's too warm.
When it's set to 71, I need a blanket, but then I get too warm and take it off, then I get cold and put it back on...
When I set it to 70 or below (within reason) I sleep just fine under a light blanket.
But the best is when set to 72 and I can comfortably sleep under a sheet, no blankets required.
I would very much like to have a thermostat with a 0.5 degree F increment.
My vote would be to use Celcius, BUT, renamed to be spell-able by the average 3rd grader (C-scale?) and, here's the important part, then tripled so that freezing (water) is at 0 deg. and boiling is at 300. This puts my target sleep zone at a nice round 67 (or 66.6... for you evil purists), and too hot to go outside will be at an alarming triple digit 100. (I have no trouble walking 2 miles in the 105 deg F. Texas heat, but then, I'm healthier than most people, my age or otherwise.)
The tripled Celsius scale has all the advantages of both systems.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday July 28 2017, @07:21PM (1 child)
Not all degrees are equal, even when using the same scale. 70 degrees with low humidity (say ~45%, considered close to ideal in most HVAC documentation I have read) is much more comfortable than 70 degrees with 75%+ humidity. At the latter level of saturation, individual degrees Fahrenheit do make a difference.
My question is, do thermostats differ by percents of a degree in Celcius? If not, you definitely have an issue of practical precision, which seems to be the point of TFA: what good is a system you use improperly, or cannot use to best effect? I can get single-degree precision in Fahrenheit on my programmable unit right now, and it matters to me.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @08:58PM
Thermostats in Celsius usually allow you to set the temperature by half-degrees (so, 21º goes to 21.5º then 22º, etc). So basically the same precision as in F for all intents and purposes.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by KritonK on Friday July 28 2017, @09:40AM
Indeed. I'm more familiar with Celsius, and I'm as comfortable with this scale as you describe. Having lived in the US for a few years, as well, I am also familiar with the Farenheit scale: if the temperature is in the sixties, it is cool; if it is in the seventies, it is comfortable; if it is in the eighties, it is hot. One might argue that the Farenheit scale is too precise, as knowing that the temperature is within a ten degree range is often sufficient. Similarly, if one needs more precision with the Celsius scale, one can always use decimals, but for ordinary use they are unnecessary. I've seen outdoor temperature displays giving the temperature with a 0.5 degree (Celsius) precision, and have never seen the point in that.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Friday July 28 2017, @12:20PM
You didn't actually address anything in my argument. I believe people don't appreciate working in negative numbers, and that they like having the ends of the scale be approximately 0 and 100. You just said I believe that because I'm American. Well, I'm American and I vastly prefer the metric system for the exact same reason that I prefer Fahrenheit - 1, 10, 100 - easy units for people with 10 fingers to work in.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 28 2017, @02:45AM
If you grew up with a temperature scale like centigrade * 2, you might also be more comfortable with those numbers.
I like 72 degrees F - that's 22.2 in C, but might be even better as 44.4 in 2C? or not, who knows.
Water freezing would still be 0 in 2C, kinda useful that way - and 100F becomes 75.5 in 2C.
So, I'd say in 2C, 40 is cool, 50 is getting warm, 70 is uncomfortably warm, and killer hot at 80, and by 100 you'll need desert survival gear.
Or, if you really want to mess with people, make a CF scale where water freezes at 0 and boils at 212, Confusion Factor would be awesomely high.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by aclarke on Friday July 28 2017, @03:54PM
I would imagine about 100% of the people who agree with you grew up with Fahrenheit, and 100% of the people who disagree with you grew up with Celsius. For example, I grew up with C, lived in the US for almost a decade, and still think F is stupid for measuring almost anything.
Your statement makes sense to YOU, because you are used to Fahrenheit. That's fine, but this argument is a subjective one.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:13PM
Seriously, that's the best arguments you could come up with? If decimals in degrees don't matter for us in the Celsius world, it is mostly because we can't distinguish it any way. Also, for my comfort, relative air humidity is more important for feeling comfortable than the difference of a few degrees in temperature.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:15PM (21 children)
Teach the controversy, right?
You try living without water for a couple of weeks and tell me how that's working out for you.
Whoever thinks Fahrenheit is better should be summarily ridiculed in public. And upon that person, I wish only the worst, like stubbing his toe every 30 seconds against a red-hot iron table leg.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:42PM (19 children)
I've never understood why non-U.S. people get so butthurt about Fahrenheit. It's not hurting you, dude. Just let it be.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:51PM (1 child)
Actually, confusion over units of measure has resulted in quite a few problems. There is no real reason to keep separate systems, it just causes problems.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday July 31 2017, @04:05PM
You could make the same argument about languages but nobody's trying to force everybody to use only one.
"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, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday July 27 2017, @08:37PM (6 children)
Because it obfuscates matters and results in accidents like Mars Climate Orbiter crash in 1998 because.. *drumroll* ground software supplied by Lockheed Martin produced results in a United States customary unit. So NASA went full SI in 2007. US military and government adopted SI in 1975.
Suppose you want to find out the amount of energy needed to change the temperature. Well then it's: Energy = Mass * Specific heat capacity * Temperature difference
If the temperature is in Fahrenheit, if it's even specified at all like in the cases of "degrees". There will be a lot more of calculations.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 27 2017, @08:56PM (5 children)
So make rules about which you use in scientific and technical contexts. Use by the man on the street doesn't hurt anyone.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:11PM (3 children)
Actually it does, do you know how many annoyed world citizens have had to talk to US ignoramuses about how 20-30 degrees isn't freezing cold?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:21PM
It should be obvious to "annoyed world citizens" that they're talking about Fahrenheit. If they're willfully misunderstanding in order to call the other person an ignoramus, I've got a mirror to show you who the problem is.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:24PM (1 child)
Probably not nearly as many as those world ignoramuses having to be told 70-80 degrees is not deathly hot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @10:04AM
That's a pretty good Sauna temperature, if it's in C. Pretty damn cold if it's in F.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday July 30 2017, @03:31PM
More to keep track of. It's way more efficient to make use of one temperature definition. The only exception is Kelvin which is a special case needed for some calculations.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Lester on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:07PM (7 children)
Communication is easier if everybody uses the same language. Celsius is the international standard, and the science standard. So it is Fahrenheit who hinders communication.
Having said that, I'm not particulary concerned about Fahrenheit. Any debate about which is better is stupid, both scales are arbitrary. So that statement about Fahrenheit better than celsius looks more like USA people are butthurted about celsius.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:31PM (3 children)
Celsius is not the standard. Kelvin is.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday July 28 2017, @06:26AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday July 28 2017, @08:58AM (1 child)
Celsius is just Kelvin with a predefined offset meant to make day-to-day numbers use less digits. Fahrenheit is just purely arbitrary.
(Score: 3, Touché) by tangomargarine on Friday July 28 2017, @03:25PM
And Fahrenheit is Rankine with a similar offset.
"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 Mykl on Friday July 28 2017, @03:48AM (2 children)
To be fair, the US Government has been trying [wikipedia.org] to move everyone across to Metric, but it seems that the average US citizen is more resistant to change than most other countries.
It's worth noting that the US is now one of only 3 countries in the world that has not adopted the SI (metric) system as their official set of measures. The other two are Myanmar (Burma) and Liberia.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @10:09AM
"the government of Myanmar has stated that the country would metricate with a goal of completion by 2019"
We'll see, although it's not that black and white with the rest of the world either, unfortunately.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @04:42PM
We're never going to go metric and we were one of the first countries to adopt the SI system. All of our measures are defined based upon the SI units.
We don't use them for things outside of medicine and science because the units are stupid and annoying to use when you don't have a measuring device. A meter is too long, we don't use yards much for the same reason, it's too long to be conveniently estimated, but too short to be of any practical use. Centimeters are too freaking short. An inch is something that's easily related to a person's finger and same goes for the foot. A persons foot and finger are not going to be exactly the same as those measures, but it's a relatively constant difference that makes estimation easier.
Likewise, temperatures get compared to body temperature by everybody anywhere that isn't using instruments to take the reading. Having the scale have on end on body temperature makes sense because of that.
Then there's time. Literally, the only measurement that desperately needs to be made metric has been made metric nowhere in the world.
If you're the sort of person that goes around with a meter stick and properly calibrated temperature probe, then the metric system is for you, otherwise using it is a kludge as it's not really designed with everyday living in mind. It's designed for conducting scientific research by people on Earth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:30PM
Easy enough—because it's an imperial PITA.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 28 2017, @02:47AM
It's a national pride sort of thing more than anything else - the way we learned it in school, why change?
If the world wants one system, they should copy ours! (equally (in)valid when spoken from any perspective.)
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Friday July 28 2017, @03:50PM
Try living without air for a couple of weeks and tell me how that's working for you.
What a terrible argument.
The most important thing for a temperature scale argument for me is: How easily can I make/calibrate my own thermometer to within a reasonable level of accuracy?
Melting ice = 0
Steam at sea-level = 100
How does one make a fahrenheit thermometer?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:17PM
If precision is the goal, then use more significant digits.
Also, if our levels of perception cannot distinguish between two values (e.g. 22F and 23F; 98F and 99F) then extra precision is unnecessary. Perception of outside temperature is probably much more dependent on humidity, wind, and sun exposure than a few degrees in absolute temperature anyway.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MrGuy on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:17PM (1 child)
This would be like arguing the kilometer is only "suited" to measuring distances on the earth's surface, because it was originally defined [wikipedia.org] as 1/10,000,000th of the distance from the north pole to the equator on a line passing through Paris. And therefore measuring in miles are the more appropriate to all distance measures in astronomy.
Sure, the zero and 100 points of celsius are based on water, but that doesn't mean it's only "suited" to measuring water.
Oh and on Farenheit being "suitable" for measuring the air? Yeah, not so much. [wikipedia.org] The endpoints of the Farenheit scale were chosen to put zero at the freezing point of a water/salt mixture, and the scaling in a way that made a pleasing ratio in powers of 2 between that temperature, the melting point of pure water, and human body temperature (32 degrees, followed by 64 degrees). Not a thing about being "appropriate" to measure the air in there at all.
The only REMOTELY sane argument in a bunch of circular reasoning is that small differences in temperature are perceptible to humans, and a finer grained scale avoids fractions being important.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:20PM
And, apparently, it used to be about the size of a meter.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(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.