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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: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @01:04AM (1 child)
It has more to do with the fact that the US is a large enough country that we can get whatever units we want on appliances and other items. Combine that with the fact that the metric system adds absolutely no benefit over the system that's in place here and you get a recipe for never changing. The longer it takes the more infrastructure and things we have that are built with imperial measures.\
Europe went metric country by country, not as a continent. Much of the ugliness is forgotten because most of the infrastructure had to be rebuilt following the world wars.
Most of the rest of the world converted before they developed, after rebuilding or because they weren't large enough to have things produced in the local units. China is a particularly big mess as they still use their traditional measures, as well as both metric and imperial ones depending upon the context.
But, really, unless the Europeans want to pay for us to tear up every road and rebuild ever building and replace all the other things, I suggest they STFU as it's not their money that it's going to cost to make these silly changes.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Friday July 28 2017, @02:58AM
You sound just like Abe Simpson...
"The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it."