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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: 2) by hash14 on Wednesday September 15 2021, @01:31AM (2 children)
Okay, here's a better example. This seems like something that could come up a lot in say, carpentry or other minor construction projects. Suppose you need some plaster to surround a window for example. Would you rather compute the perimeter if you measured them to be 2 feet, 8 inches by 4 feet, 10 inches? Personally, I would find it much easier if I knew they were 80cm by 145cm instead. Let's make it even more fun then - what if you need 4x that amount of material? I can do the metric ones in my head. It's 9m. I'm not even going to bother trying with the imperial units.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @02:50AM
Imperial units are base-12, the math is super easy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @09:51PM
Except you wouldn't do that. You'd measure it in inches or feet for the same reason that you wouldn't use both meters and centimeters if it's large enough for both to apply. And that's a regular theme where the examples are engineered to make SI look good, ignoring the fact that nobody would use the customary measures in such a way.
In America, we know more about SI units than foreign people typically know about customary measures. It's a foregone conclusion that we're wrong because most countries didn't have a functioning system of enforced units of measure that we're wrong, but if you look at how the SI measures came about, it's not a good system for most situations. Most of the nice features are completely accidental.