Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday September 14 2021, @06:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the accuracy-vs-precision dept.

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @02:03AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @02:03AM (#1177944)

    The snow's fine. It's the black ice in not-obviously shaded spots on otherwise clear roads that f*ck you.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @04:29PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @04:29PM (#1178025)

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 15 2021, @09:33PM (#1178115)

      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)

      by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday September 15 2021, @10:51PM (#1178140)

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 16 2021, @06:49AM (#1178212)

        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.