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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 29 2017, @06:19AM
Not sure if the person posing his position realises but, with Celsius, the temperature is usually presented to the public by television at end of the day with a decimal point before predicting tomorrows temperatures... without a decimal place. The programme is called ‘The News’ and it is streamed through the internet in case you cannot live in a Celsius country (there are just 7 with 4 or so protectorates who do not use it).
The boiling point of whatever medium you're working with must be taken into account as this is science and communication with other human beings. Precision means everything,
To retain farenheit will lead to 'accidents' like when NASA failed to convert metric to imperial and lost a satelite.
The only reason you would want to keep farenheit is if you distilled alcohol or wanted amazing sounding temperature numbers to alarm people to the cult of man made global warming.