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When I use degrees, I measure them in:
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(Score: 2, Informative) by bart9h on Friday March 14 2014, @05:10PM
100 for body temperature is reasonable, but zero as the coolest he could reproduce? What that is?
It's better for the two points to relate to something we can comprehend, which is what Celsius does: everybody knows how cold freezing water is, and how hot boiling water is.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hankwang on Friday March 14 2014, @06:08PM
That's an ice-salt mixture and actually not so bad in terms of reproducibility: a mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride, a salt, at a 1:1:1 ratio. This is a frigorific mixture which stabilizes its temperature automatically: that stable temperature was defined as 0 deg F [wikipedia.org]
The second calibration point was 32 deg F, by definition the same as 0 deg C. It is kind of silly to only have two calibration points both for cold temperatures, which means that you will have to extrapolate your thermometer scale. The third one was not very reproducible (96 deg F = body temperature, not 100 deg F) and it would have been a great coincidence anyway if that third point happened to be at a nice round or divisible number.
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(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Friday March 14 2014, @06:35PM
Fahrenheit was the first guy ever to devise a quantitative measure of temperature, in 1724. Seventeen. Twenty-four. Cut him some slack. :-) According to Wikipedia, Fahrenheit set zero temperature as that of a mixture of ammonium chloride, water, and ice [wikipedia.org] is frigorific [wikipedia.org]. I just learned the word "frigorific" and think it is my new favorite! I don't know if he discovered those frigorific properties himself, or how much trial and error someone had to do to find something reproducibly that cold, but I bet it was a hell of a lot. I'm inclined to forgive him if he assumed that no one else would find a colder temperature that could be used as a better zero, and he did this work exactly 100 years before the idea of an absolute zero [wikipedia.org] was published.
In hindsight, Fahrenheit's choice of the zero point of his temperature scale doesn't correlate to anything we encounter in daily life, and it's also obsolete for laboratory purposes, so I agree with bart9h: it's past time to retire it. Use Celsius for the weather report and Kelvin for science & engineering. But Fahrenheit's temperature scale did make sense at the time he invented it, and I don't blame him for failing to see the future in terms of his zero not staying the coldest possible temperature reference.
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(Score: 2) by blackest_k on Saturday March 15 2014, @12:37PM
si units all seem to be water based e.g 1 metric ton of water is 1 meter cubed or a 1000 litres weighing 1 kg per litre temperature in c follows similarly.
On the other hand imperial measurements are pretty good for guestimates a foot pretty close to an actual foot an inch the width of your thumb a yard about the length of your arm to your nose.
temperature 60, 70, 80 degrees is bit chilly warm hot i'd probably want a coat at 60 and a t-shirt at 80. The corresponding temperatures in C I really don't know.
makes sense to use centigrade when you are wanting to be accurate. As for kelvin we know it starts 273 degrees below 0C living with km/h instead of mph here i approximate 100kmh to 60mph and 120 to about 75mph. Its close enough anyway.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 15 2014, @07:21PM
Not all. The meter was originally defined as the length of the meridian from the north pole through Paris to the equator. Which is why the earth circumference is to a good approximation 40000 kilometers. And of course the second is also completely unrelated to water.
However the kilogram was indeed originally defined as the weight of 1 liter of water.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday March 16 2014, @08:36PM
Err ... I just notice that I made a quite embarrassing error: The meter was of course based on, not defined as the length of the meridian. Indeed, it was defined as the ten millionth part of that.
Otherwise the earth circumference would be just four meters. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by blackest_k on Saturday March 22 2014, @04:05PM
lucky coincidence that 1000 litres = 1000kg of water and that happens to be pretty close to being 1 cubic meter at room temperature.
There's no real reason why they have to be so close, I guess gravity could be a part of it.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 22 2014, @04:15PM
No, as I wrote at the other post, it's not coincidence.
First, that 1000 liters are a cubic meter is no coincidence because that's exactly how the liter is defined.
Second, that a liter of water has the mass of 1 kilogram is no coincidence because that's how the kilogram was originally defined.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by blackest_k on Saturday March 22 2014, @06:21PM
yes your quite right i was thinking of it backwards the litre the kg are relatively arbitrary in that a kilogram and litre of water would be a bit bigger if the meter was.
but apart from the meter seems that water gets used for part of the definition a lot.
(Score: 1) by SleazyRidr on Tuesday March 18 2014, @04:01PM
0 degrees Fahrenheit was set to be colder than the coldest temperature you're likely to find in Denmark. The ammonium chloride mixture was worked out later to make it sound a little more sciency.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3146/did- cecil-err-in-explaining-the-significance-of-zero-f ahrenheit [straightdope.com]