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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) by vux984 on Friday July 28 2017, @12:43AM (4 children)
Nobody counts 5000 paces and says about 5 miles. They count 1000 paces, and tick off a mile, and start over. You can just as easily do km the same way... if 1000 paces is a mile 620 paces is a km. Count to 620, tick off a km, and start over. Just as easy.
Ah... but 1000 is a nice round number? We're really not going there right? :)
FWIW anybody even slightly serious would use an adjustment, based on their height. For example, if you are 5'10 it's on average 2155 steps (1075 paces) etc... so they'll be counting 1075 paces to a mile. That's no more round than 665 paces to a km (also height adjusted). And anyone serious will likely have counted out a few miles against mile markers and know their personal average... which won't be a round number.
But the bigger question is, who really has such an empty mind that they would spend their day counting paces??
And anyone using a step counter or gadget assist, will have the gadget simply estimate either unit on its own; likely factoring in height, as well steps over time to get a better reckoning.
I agree with you about volume measurements though they're a mess. But its worse even than you mentioned... dry vs wet, imperial vs UK; a pint is meaningless without a lot of context.
Imperial pint is 568 mL, the US liquid pint is 473 mL, while the dry pint is 551 mL; and in some metric countries, for beer marketing they just use 500 mL; in Quebec a pint (un pinte) is an imperial quart... which is 2 pints; and the nonsense extends to ounces, gallons...too. And then they have volume also as cubic linear units... as in how many fluid ounces in a cubic inch?
Perhaps, the biggest reason to go metric is the units are at least an international standard. There is no way to fix imperial / english / USA measurements, because even if tomorrow they all agreed and standardized on one pint = X never going to happen; but even if it did we'd still spend the rest of our lives clarifying whether it was an international standard pint, or a pre-2017 USA pint... and converting between them.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday July 28 2017, @02:17AM (3 children)
Ah... but 1000 is a nice round number? We're really not going there right? :)
It's important that it's a nice round number; it's easier to write: the number of paces in a mile is 'M', rather than something weird like 'DCXX'.
FWIW anybody even slightly serious would use an adjustment, based on their height. For example, if you are 5'10 it's on average 2155 steps (1075 paces) etc
Wrong. When you're marching, everyone has the same pace. And Roman soldiers likely were not 5'10", probably more like 5'5".
But the bigger question is, who really has such an empty mind that they would spend their day counting paces??
Roman soldiers, that's who. :-)
And anyone using a step counter or gadget assist,
Romans didn't have such things.
Yeah, these days it's really not that useful, but at the time it probably was. The entire reason a "mile" has that name is because it comes from "mil", which is Latin for 1000 (also, where "million" came from, before they added 3 more zeroes), and it was the distance the Roman Army marched in 1000 paces. The Romans were probably sticklers for that kind of thing, so their marched miles were probably reasonably accurate.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday July 28 2017, @04:08AM (2 children)
Touché.
Ok once upon a time a mile being a 1000 paces was a useful metric; but I don't think it really holds much value today.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday July 28 2017, @07:15AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday July 28 2017, @04:32PM
Indeed. I'd say a more useful heuristic distance would be either "1 minute's walk" or "10 minute's walk
I completely disagree. That might be OK if you're talking about Roman soldiers who are all trained to march in formation, at the same speed, but for normal people it's useless. Personally I walk 2-3 times as fast as some people (esp. old people...). I can cover far more ground in 10 minutes than some 300-pound short person. That really isn't a useful measure at all.