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https://www.zmescience.com/other/fahrenheit-vs-celsius-did-the-u-s-get-it-right-after-all/
At face value, measuring the temperature using Celsius instead of Fahrenheit seems to make a lot of face sense. After all, the freezing point of water is a perfect 0 degrees Celsius — not the inexplicable 32 degrees 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.
Celsius is also part of the much-praised metric system. It seems as though every developed country in the world has adopted the metric system except for the United States, which still clings to tge [sic] older, more traditional measurements. Finally, scientists prefer to use Celsius (when they're not using Kelvin, which is arguably the most awkward unit of measurement for temperature). If it's good enough for scientists, it should be good enough for everybody else, right?
Not necessarily. Fahrenheit may be the best way to measure temperature after all. Why? Because most of us only care about air temperature, not water temperature.
[...] 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.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @07:27PM (18 children)
That works both ways though, you can use decimal places with customary measures. The issue with metric measurements is that the definitions are really, really dumb. Fahrenheit puts one endofthe scale close to body temperature and avoids excessive use of negative numbers during weather forecasts.
It's really a questionof anthrocentric versus earth centered measurement and they're both going to suck when we leave the Earth in the future.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @07:45PM
Who is this "we", Mr Bezos?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Tuesday September 14 2021, @08:06PM (7 children)
But the negative numbers are immensely useful. Weather at below 0°C is very different from weather above 0°C. If temperatures are close to 0°C, as driver you have to start worrying about ice on the street. Indeed, 0°C is the one most important point on the temperature scale, as far as weather is concerned.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @01:29AM (5 children)
No it's not, you southern wimp. You don't get real snow until below 0F, that stuff just melts.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @02:03AM (4 children)
The snow's fine. It's the black ice in not-obviously shaded spots on otherwise clear roads that f*ck you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @04:29PM (3 children)
Oh, geeez, don't get me started on "black ice". Southerners throw that term around like it's an everyday occurrence in the winter months. It's not. And, you've probably never seen it. In more than fifty years of driving, I've only encountered black ice 3 times. And, oh yeah - it's going to affect more than 10 or 20 yards of pavement - it's going to stretch as far as the local weather conditions reach. Anything smaller, and you're looking at some other form of ice, maybe melted snow running across the road that froze again after the sun set. That ain't "black ice". If you can drive onto the ice at slow speed, turn your steering wheel, and the vehicle responds, at all, it is not "black ice".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @09:33PM
It depends where you're driving, it's most commonly found near bodies of water, but yeah, black ice isn't super common due to it needing petty specific conditions to form. You're far more likely to have issues with regular ice. Assuming the local authorities haven't plowed and salted the roads.
(Score: 3, Informative) by coolgopher on Wednesday September 15 2021, @10:51PM (1 child)
I’m intrigued. You seem to have a different definition of black ice from me and the AC. To me at least, black ice is the term used to describe those patches of road which look perfectly normal given the lighting conditions, but in reality have a thin, super slick layer of ice which you only discover because the car keeps going the direction it entered no matter where you try to steer.
Where I’m from, it’s not uncommon in late autumn when the humidity is high and dew/fog might’ve frozen overnight and not yet melted in patches, even though the rest of the road is clear from it. Often this is in corners where there might be a few trees shading from more than one angle. I’ve never encountered large stretches of it (thankfully), but a few meters in a sharp corner can be troublesome enough! I’ve managed to stay out of the ditch so far, but it got mighty close once.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 16 2021, @06:49AM
I'm not the same AC, but the differences in usage isn't surprising because even different meteorological groups define "black ice" differently. The maritime weather usage has "black ice" that refers to accumulations of any ice that weighs more than a certain amount that the particular boat can handle. The NWS uses it to refer to any glazing ice on transportation surfaces specifically that is neither continual nor visible. The WMO uses it to refer to any transparent glazing on any surface caused by liquid water on land and to the columnar ice sheet that mostly forms on navigatible waters. The AMS uses it to refer to a form of glaze icing on below-freezing hard surfaces that has a similar columnar grain structure caused by drizzle or other forms of small non-supercooled liquid precipitation and condensation. There are also regional differences as well. In some places, you can only get black ice from sea spray and other only recognize icing on bridges. All of that is why even the official definitions are getting more and more general because the recognize that usage is descriptive not prescriptive and often context-dependent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @02:14PM
It's really not. I've been in weather that was below freezing, and I was in weather below 0F and if you really think that 0C is a decent dividing line, then you clearly haven't been out in cold weather. Below about 20F, it gets harder and harder to notice a difference other than by how long it takes you to get frostbite. It was a real surprise the first time I was out in subzero weather that it didn't really feel that much different than when it was 20F out. Around here it rarely, if ever, gets to the low 20F and I can't remember it ever being in the teens due to the marine air.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @08:24PM (4 children)
Sorry but you deserve some mocking.
"Fahrenheit puts one endofthe scale close to body temperature and avoids excessive use of negative numbers during weather forecasts."
The end of the scale is not 100 degrees, body temperature is not a commonly used number and it wouldn't matter which scale you're on. As for the negative numbers, above is a better reason why they are actually incredibly useful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @02:31PM (3 children)
The fact of the matter is that if you think that I deserve some mocking, then you clearly don't understand any of the measuring systems involved here. If the SI was really that great, then you wouldn't see so much resistance to it from people using measuring systems based on British Imperial measures. Those measures are hardly perfect, but at least they're relatively thought out for things that people actually do, rather than counting on a bunch of luck to have things work out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @07:07PM (2 children)
Weird hill to die on but ok. Watching the extreme nationalism supplant a rightwingers logic is very much an interesting phenomenon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @09:37PM (1 child)
It's got nothing to do with nationalism, the SI measures just suck for most uses. If they didn't suck them nobody would care about the U.S. and a few other holdouts not drinking the flavoraid. The obvious superiority would do the job. But, virtually all the SI units are inconvenient for most uses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 16 2021, @08:02PM
It's got everything to do with nationalism, the SI measures are superior for most uses. If they weren't then nobody would care about the U.S. and a few other holdouts not drinking the flavoraid. The obvious superiority should do the job. But, virtually all the Imperial users are scared of change which is why they are called conservatives.
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Tuesday September 14 2021, @11:55PM (2 children)
This has to be the most inconsequential consideration for everything ever designed in the history of anything...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @09:39PM (1 child)
And using base 10 to do conversions is a better basis?
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Thursday September 16 2021, @06:25AM
Of course it is.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday September 15 2021, @01:32AM
No, No, No. With Celsius you can use decimals, with Fahrenheit you have to use fractions. 20.215 C = 70 3/16 F
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.