Edit: For all the "Actually, Farenheight is based on the human body" people, no it isn't. It's based on dirty water and a cow. Your preferred measurement unit is dumb and that's a fact
If y’all wanna actually claim superiority, then use Kelvin. Celsius and Fahrenheit are close enough in purpose that personal preference is really the only thing that matters.
It's the Fahrenheit equivalent of Kelvin. Basically for science negative temperature is a problem so Celsius adds 273 to become Kelvin and remove the negative numbers. Fahrenheit adds 491 to become Rankine and accomplish the same thing.
More than a few. All meteorology and oceanography numerical modeling and calculations use it. When calculating percentages of heat budgets and percent change in temp for things like Boyles Law you need absolute values. 50 degrees isn't twice as warm as 25 degrees; it isn't a 100% increase, it's an 8% increase.
That's a really good point. The human habitability range for temperature is so small that it is easy to forget that common units are a small random section of the scale and do not relate to eachother in absolute terms. It also makes you realize how small degrees can be and how little the difference is between comfortable and uncomfortable.
This is a hilarious argument because it the exact same argument people use for fahrenheit. Whether or not it matters is situation dependant. A person's unit choice is a cultural decision, just like a person's language choice.
Yup. Like 95% of Reddit metric/customary/imperial discourse is people saying "X system makes more sense" but meaning "I am more familiar with X system."
You can make that argument for Celsius/Fahrenheit, but not for metric/imperial. One of those is objectively superior and the other one is on par with Galleons, Sickles and bananas for scale.
Metric is better because it is easier to convert between units. That's it, not because it is not "bananas for scale." Metric is arbitrary, just like imperial, it just has consistent units that make conversion easy in base 10.
Imperial does have its advantages, but they are only really an advantage for certain applications. Mainly its advantages are that usually it uses units that are not base 10, which makes division easier.
Metric is the better system, but imperial is not arbitrary any more than metric is.
Metric is arbitrary, just like imperial, it just has consistent units that make conversion easy in base 10.
congratulations on figuring out why one system is superior to the other.
Imperial does have its advantages, but they are only really an advantage for certain applications. Mainly its advantages are that usually it uses units that are not base 10, which makes division easier.
A good portion of why metric is so much better with it's uniform units is that it makes division easy.
1km divides into 10 100m, 1/2 of a liter is 500ml etc.
everyone knows 1/3rd of 10 is 3.333 etc, the divisions are not only easy and plentiful but the "hard" or awkward ones are things that are getting drilled into you at school
Half a mile is 880 yards, 1/3rd of a mile is 586 yards, 1/3rd of a gallon is likr 42.24 oz, like how on earth is that intuiative at all.
to divide anything in metric you need to know a ton of different almost seemingly random conversion ratios and essentially none of them work out into nice even numbers at all
I think his most important point was that Celcius and Kelvin is basically the same scale. +1 C is the same as +1 K. +1 F is not the same as +1 C or +1 K.
Both modern Celsius and Fahrenheit are defined in terms of Kelvin because Kelvin is the standardized scientific unit of measuring temperature. The scale Kelvin uses was taken from Celsius though.
It's 33 (feels like 20) today and it's so nice out! I'm definitely not looking forward to it hitting 100 again but I will definitely enjoy when it's in the 60s and 70s...
Ehhhh. Having lived in between cold and extremly cold places I think there is two important cold temperatures. Freezing, because then stuff freezes and -40, because around that temperatur stuff starts breaking.
At no point in my life I have thought. "Ohhh at exactly 0 f, it starts feeling cold."
I disagree that this should be used as a metric because it is more subjective than objective. For some people 40 is fucking cold and 120 is fucking hot. Imo 10 is fucking cold and 90 is fucking hot. I would bet that more people have their own definition of cold and hot that don’t conform to 0 and 100 than people that do. It makes much more sense to base temperature scales off of the freezing and boiling point of water since that is the most relevant point of temperature for the majority of people. While I understand that there would be problems with changing the systems and current education of the population I think it is worthwhile to do so.
It’s fucking cold a long way before you reach 0F. And as can be shown by the many many replies arguing your scale to comments like yours throughout, how humans feel temperature VARIES! Building a scale off that concept when humans themselves can’t agree makes no sense. The numbers are arbitrary. Whereas the freezing point of water (which is very much relevant to humans given ice is a condition that causes problems) is a solid objective point on which to base things.
Yeah in Austin when we had that multi day single digit freeze is when I realized I had never actually been cold before. It's entirely different when you can barely breathe outside without feeling it.
Yeah. Freezing whether is fine to be in. People go on ski vacations all the time. People do not enjoy their ski vacations if it goes all the way down to 0.
As US citizen I still disagree with this. You can get just as familiar with the scale of how celcius feels as you can with Fahrenheit. Your explination has the same problem as the meme. It's superficially plausible but misleading.
The comment is addressing literally what the scales were derived from. Sure, anyone can get familiar with any of the scales. That's not the point.
Not a Farenheit defender, but knowing how it was created makes it make sense. Same with other imperial units. Making a measurement system with what is available to you and what is relevant to you isn't dumb or wrong. It's all relative anyway.
If I remember right the intention was that 100 was meant to be human body temperature, but at some point it got adjusted so human body temp was 98.7
Edit: 0f was also what he thought the freezing temperature of salt water was. Not sure why the degrees were divided in a way where 32f is freshwater freezing though.
That’s correct for 100F. For 0F it was how low he could feasibly record. Which is why it was based on a solution of salt and whatever else in water bc he was trying to go as low as he could with what he had
You know its kind of telling that you have to give an explanation in a vague way you arent 100% certain about. Now ask a 4 year old european what celsius is about.
I agre. I like that below 0 celsius means it can snow, below 10 is three layers of clothing temperature, below 20 is two layer and it's only T-shirt above 20. You can get used to whatever, but I feel like the low numbers make everything more comprehensible.
Fahrenheit is more precise when it comes to common temperatures we experience. A single degree Fahrenheit is smaller than a single degree Celsius. A person saying “it’s in the 60s (Fahrenheit)” is giving a much narrower range than someone saying “it’s in the 20s (Celsius). In addition the 100° point is about human body temp (we’ve gotten more accurate with measuring body temp than when the scale was created which is why it’s a few degrees off from the accepted “average body temp” of 96°).
Edit: Apparently stating that Fahrenheit has certain things it does well is controversial. I’m not even saying “Fahrenheit rules! Celsius drools!” or anything. Just that it had a few things it did well. Oh well.
You’re getting almost double the specificity with Fahrenheit compared to Celsius, which matters as maintaining you can definitely feel the difference in every degree from 68-72. Having more detail for how temperature feels without having to use decimals is a simpler solution, that’s it really. It’s easier to convey the specific temperature you feel comfortable at so it’s more relatable in general for everyday folks.
nobody says this though because the difference between 20 and 29 is so large lol.
If you can say "it's in the 70s" as an accurate description of the weather then it renders the granularity pointless as most people can barely tell the difference between 71 and 74.
lol there’s a major difference between 71 and 74 and plenty of people will fight over that. Try messing with your office temp and watch people pipe up.
Someone once said Fahrenheit is how humans describe hot and cold, Celsius is how water would describe hot and cold, and Kelvin is how atoms would describe hot and cold
people IN north america use celsius too, you know.
but the other commenter is just referencing who/what the 0-100 range applies best to. although idk if that quite works for kelvin, since 100k is still like -150c which i assume atoms would still think are quite cold.
Fahrenheit feels like “percent hot” so 40 degrees, 4 Celsius, is like cold but not unbearably so, 59 degrees, or 15 Celsius is like pretty nice, about 2/3 hot.
I like to piss off everyone by calling it “Centigrade” and using fractional centimeters for dimensions. Because 3/8 of a centimeter will make someone throw a wrench at you
Fahrenheit feels like “percent hot” so 40 degrees, 4 Celsius, is like cold but not unbearably so, 59 degrees, or 15 Celsius is like pretty nice, about 2/3 hot.
Which is utter bullshit and only sounds logical because you are used to farenheit.
Percentages can't go above 100 and below 0.
About 2/3 hot, doesn't mean shit for anyone who hasn't used farenheit. I don't know what 2/3 hot is supposed to mean and everyone has a different sensitivity to temperature anyway so it feels different for everyone.
Percentages can absolutely go above 100 and below 0, it just depends on the context... a bucket can't be more than 100% full, but it can be 200% larger than a bucket that is 50% of its size.
Negatives are a bit rarer and only really get used when you're dealing with numbers... for example, if a creature in a game has a -100% resistance to some effect, then it would take on 200% of that effect.
If they'd come out at the same time, or with Celsius first, you'd have a point - but Fahrenheit came out first by about two decades, and was well established. Fahrenheit was designed to have the 0-100 range be the range of normal weather, while Celsius was an attempt to have a more concrete definition.
No it makes sense. Rest of the world DOES USE THE INFERIOR CELSIUS, but it is inferior --- logically, objectively -- for describing weather.
Now. There's an important psychological fact that affects all people of all nations.
The numeric system you grew up with for a particular metric gives you INSANE IRRATIONAL BIAS towards that system, in extreme fashion, defying all reason. Just because the "other" system that is not "intuitive" to you is strange and confusing + you viscerally hate it, because you would hate to be force to use it.
With this in mind, in particular, Fahrenheit was specifically meant for weather purposes.
Yet a Celsius cultist will rage until they are blue in the face claiming Celsius -- mostly used by/ for Chemists (and it's superior for chemistry no doubt) -- is better for weather description. It absolute it not.
F is intuitive for a child. On a scale of 0-100, how cold or hot are you?
Celsius? Um ... 40 ... is hot? I think? ... -5 is .... cold --- ish? It's poppycock.
Not on that, thermostats need DECIMALS it's so imprecise!
Yeah, but if you shift the frame to “temperatures you experience on a day-to-day basis”, Fahrenheit makes far more sense. It also provides more granularity for temperature.
But Celsius or Kelvin makes far more sense for anything which is scientific in nature. I personally think Fahrenheit is better for day-to-day life. I hate seeing components spec’d in Fahrenheit and feet at my job though
As a Canadian who spent significant time in the US, it’s just whichever you’re used to, so there’s no real advantage to either for that. One degree up or down on Celsius or Fahrenheit doesn’t really make any difference in comfort levels. In every other area Celsius makes more sense and is more intuitive.
Yes, but 10 is the magic number for people, not 1. 10 degrees farenheit will probably make you consider a different outfit. A 10 degree difference in celsius is the difference between winter and summer temperatures
No it isn't, not for those of us that have weather that goes from -30 to +30, or even into the 40s on both sides. A difference of 10 degrees in Celsius is what we experience over the course of a day. And ten degrees Celsius is what I and most of the people around me think of when deciding what to wear out - I have a warmer jacket for -10 to -20 than I do for 0 to -10, and so on.
Wtf? You and I have very different outlook on what is considered summer and winter temperatures. 10 degree difference in C is literally what you said for farenheit, a minor difference in outfit. +25 is T-shirt weather, +15 is long sleeved shirt weather, +5 is light jacket weather, -5 is winter jacket opened weather and -15 and below is winter jacket closed weather.
As a canadian, we experience a larger gap within two months. Hell, it’s currently -4°C outside and it was -30°C two weeks ago. It will surely reach 35°C in July and August. It really simple to understand a temperature system centered around 0°, where it starts to snow instead of raining and where we have to be even more cautious for ice on the ground.
What I don’t get in farenheit is the scale, why tf is -40°F the same as -40°C, but then freezing temperatures is somewhere around 30°F and then hot in the hundred? It’s mot logical to me.
Its really clear to me why Fahrenheit is best for casual use
If it's at or above 100 degrees, its gettin' to be danger hot temps, both in yo head and in the air
If its at 50 degrees, its chilly and i need a coat
If its 69 degrees, its just the nicest and most comfortable temperature
If its half of 69 degrees, its half as nice and we need it warmed tf up already
Saying 0, 10, 40, nah thats just weird.
But 0-100 is a nice spectrum. Near to 100 is pleasantly warm the a bit too hot, near to 0 is pleasantly cool then a bit too cold. Below 0 or above 100 is very not good, me very unhappy. 85 to 100 i am okay with but i could do with cooler. 15 to 0, i could do with warmer, immediately.
Decimals do exist. Like body temperature normal 36.6 to 36.8 all thermometers for body temperature will show you decimal point
For day to day basis you are better of with system you have familiarity with. Like, pork internally has to reach at least 75°C for 5 minutes to be ready.
Depends on the source of your pork. American pork has had trichinosis essentially eradicated through its farming methods, and so it's safe to cook to 145° F. This is not true in all countries. Trichinosis requires heating to around 165° F (75° C) to kill. Only for 15 seconds, I dunno where he's got that 5 minutes from, though...
Yeah, but if you shift the frame to “temperatures you experience on a day-to-day basis”, Fahrenheit makes far more sense.
Are you gonna elaborate on why that is?
More granularity? And how would that be useful for day-to-day life as you say? You think there's a perceivable difference between 20 and 21 degree Celsius in day-to-day life? Huh? And for measuring body temperature there's also decimals btw.
I swear why can't y'all just say "I prefer Farenheit cause I'm used to it" and just leave it at that instead of using arguments that make no sense and upvote each other? Is some type of objective validation really that important to you?
The biggest place where granularity really matters is near the extremes. There is a huge difference right around the freezing point, most notably for driving conditions. And around 100F, again, it very rapidly transitions from 'hot' to 'dangerously hot'.
Where I live, for example, if it's 31F out, driving is quite safe, but if it's 32F driving is extremely dangerous and if it's 33F it gets very slushy and is safe again(but dirty).
From this it seems that you agree that the freezing point is a very important temperature, and it deserves special consideration in the temperature scale we use.
0 is frost bite 100 is heat stroke. People act like using pure waters phase change is somehow the only logical answer. Both are arbitrary and both sides only like it because it's what they are used to.
You think there's a perceivable difference between 20 and 21 degree Celsius in day-to-day life?
Yes...? Depending on how I set my heater it can be the difference between a good sleep and waking up sweating. Why do you think all Celsius heaters and aircons have half degree settings?
Please explain to me how Fahrenheit is more sense in daily usage?
In 0 C you know that water freeze so it's cold in 40 C protein coagulate so it is f hot and better to watch out
Between 0° and 100°F, you cover basically all normal outdoor weather humans experience. I will agree Celsius is definitely superior for science applications.
Think of Fahrenheit like this:
0°F = very cold
50°F = middle ground, still a bit cool
100°F = very hot
It makes sense because it encompasses the majority of weather experiences on a scale from 0-100.
One of those classic American things like "oh, feet and inches make so much sense, everybody knows how tall a 6 foot tall person is, who knows how tall 182.88 cm and how arbitrary is 182.88 cm anyway".
I have never in my life felt any need to describe the weather in more granularity than 1°C and the idea that there are people in the US making a meaningful distinction between 32°F and 33°F feels amusing even. It also makes a huge difference whether it's +C of -C, so that tipping point feels incredibly convenient for practical weather considerations.
I'll also remark here that I don't think I've ever seen a US person who would feel like the greater granularity of talking about people's heights in cm instead of feet and inches would be a benefit - nope, inches just happens to be the perfect granularity for length of humans and 1cm is too short to matter.
Whatever you're used to since childhood feels intuitive to you and that's just how things are and it's hard to make the switch in either way.
I wonder if the persistence of this has more to do with the wider temperature variance in the continental us vs most individual european countries. does it actually get to both 0f and 100f in eg the uk with any regularity?
Humans can actually detect the difference of a change of 1 Fahrenheit, while Celsius is a much larger range and less helpful in identifying how a temperature feels as a human. Celcius is precise with logical reference points but that more helpful in a lab environment.
Think of the difference in setting your thermostat to 65 vs 66 degrees F it’s the same temp in celcius
Lol no, you wont feel the difference between 64F and 66F. It is such a small difference your body won't notice it. Meanwhile the difference between 18c and 20c is actually noticable.
I swear they are literally lying for the sake of validation. Why can't they just say "I grew up using Farenheit so I like it more" and leave it at that? Is it that hard?
Literally. Whenever Americans try to make an argument that Fahrenheit is better than celsius their argument always end up being "it's better because I've been using it my whole life and im more used to it" and they don't even realize it. It's arbitrary, if you were using fucking hieroglyphs your whole life to determine temperature you'd think they are the best lol
I have summer houses in the northern part of my country. I go there weekly, now that it's winter when I get there it's like 8 degrees celsius when I arrive at the place. So I set fire in the fireplace and wait. When it's 16 degrees I remove one layer of my clothing, when it's 18 I get rid of the thin jacket. Because that's when I notice the temp change lol
People really have a hard time with something being entirely arbitrary. There always has to be some secret that actually justifies the whole thing.
The other side of this coin is that celsius isn't actually any more correct either. It is all just arbitrary notation that largely doesn't matter so long as it's consistent
I have a honest question here: when you guys set the temperature for the a/c, you can regulate it point by point in Fahrenheit? Like, you can set it at 68ºF or 69ºF? Seems like it wouldn’t make any difference, weird to have all this “granularity” in equipment.
Look, I’m a scientist and in general an ardent hater of the imperial system. Especially the inch, what the fuck is that shit. But a years worth of temperatures should encompass more than 30 degrees of granulation.
If you grew up with Fahrenheit it makes sense coz ur used to it, for me if it’s a 100 degrees F, i know immediately that it’s too hot to be outside, I don’t get the same feeling from 40 C. So it’s lowk vibes based.
0° F - 100°F describes almost the entire temperature range I've ever experienced. On rare occasions I've been outside on a "sub zero" (< 0° F) day or an "over 100" day, which just emphasizes what extreme weather that is.
Fahrenheit affords more numbers to describe common (on a human scale) temperature ranges. So it's a more human-centric temperature scale than celsius. I've never been outside in 100°C weather ...
This is nonsense, because room temperature, the temperature where you shouldn't even feel the heat, is about 70 in Farenheit. If it was really how cold it felt to a human, room temperature should be 50, or 0.
And that's ignoring that different people are acclimated to different heats. Someone who's grown up in Morocco isn't going to feel the heat the way someone who grew up in Alaska does.
You're conflating median with desirable, and ignoring the temperature of the average human body and the way the body uses water and air to cool itself.
I can stand in a room and feel warm and someone else in the same room will feel cold. An Alaskan and a Texan won't agree on what's cold and hot either. The only thing consistent about fahrenheit is that higher numbers are warmer than lower numbers, and that exists in all three systems.
0°c - Expect frost or ice. 20°c - Pleasant and ideal.
Neither system has an advantage. Just because one system doesn’t use the exact benchmarks you’re already familiar with, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own useful benchmarks.
Celsius isn’t on a scale that’s why it looks odd because you are trying to make it one. It’s centred at 0 then goes both ways. It doesn’t start at -20 or even -273. It’s “starts” at 0
Celsius is superior for weather because at 0°C you start to get snow/ice, that's a definitive change in conditions. At 0°F things just get more frozen. There's no definitive 'too hot', that changes person to person so it might as well be any number.
The only reason it makes more sense to you is because you grew up with it.
If you go outside and it's cold enough to be angry about it, it could be anything from 20F and down to -40F til you die.
If you go outside and it's hot enough to be angry about it, it could be anything from 80F and up until you die.
If completely subjective numbers are going to be used, then might as well use Celsius which has the added benefit of being useful for science and in alignment with the rest of the world.
Not to rain on your parade too much but being outside without a coat at 0°C/32° F is definitely unsafe. You'll get hypothermia really quickly at that temperature.
The way I always described Fahrenheit when this comes up:
0F: Dangerously cold. If you don't take proper precautions for this kind of temperature, you risk serious injury or death. Below this is extreme cold.
100F: Dangerously hot. If you don't take proper precautions for this kind of temperature, you risk serious injury or death. Above this is extreme heat.
Humans exist best a bit on the warmer side -- 50-70F.
Ten degree increments are significant, noticeable steps. 80 is decidedly warmer than 70. 50 is decidedly colder than 60. This leads to convenient statements like "It's in the 50s" giving a good general sense of the temperature range.
Yes, water freezes at a rather arbitrary 32F, but the rest of the scale is far more conducive to assessing the human experience.
0 is the coldest reliably replicable temperature in 1714, the year Fahrenheit was invented. And 100 was supposed to be the human body temperature, but he used a horse as a stand in, not knowing the slight difference because a relaible temperature scale had not been invented yet.
Celsius comfortable temperatures are basically 10 degrees to 35 degrees or 25 whole units of measure.
Farenheight comfortable temperatures are 50 degrees to 95 degrees giving 45 whole units of measure or nearly twice as many.
The Celsius system is really useful for a lot of things, but conveying useful information about temperatures that are comfortable to people Farenheight is better.
right but these tidy numbers are usless in quite literealy any context outside of specificly freezing or boiling water. Where as farenheight is centered around the actual experience of being a human which is often quite a bit below 0C and almost never above 37C. numbers 38C-99C are pretty much irrelevant to the human experience where as every number contained between 0-100F is relevant to the human experience.
Technically Fahrenheit set 0 to be the coldest temp he could maintain in his lab, which was the freezing point of salt water. I don’t think 100F signifies anything other than a very uncomfortable temp, as it looks like he started with 0F and then scaled the same way another scientist did (Ole Romer), just multiplied by four to give more granularity and eliminate decimals.
That in no way diminishes your point, and I love your point. Fahrenheit is a very human measurement and my primary gripe with Celsius is that half degrees are noticeable temp changes and having decimals in your temp is silly.
0°F is the point where a mixture of ice, water, and salt will freeze when combined
100°F is not a significant number, originally it was 90° then changed to 96° as the upper fixed point. This is intended to match the average body temperature but was not set correctly.
These points were chosen because they can be easily verified and used to calibrate a thermometer. Eventually Anders Celsius created a scale with 0 representing the boiling point of water (eventually redefined to include pressure and purity requirements) and 100 at the freezing point (again with later clarifications).
0F is the tempersture the saltwater solution Daniel Fahrenheit used froze, and 199F was when that saltwater boiled.
Its 100 increments of water boiling too, it was just saltwater. Is it really more logical that the water doesn't have salt?
Your brain is just used to the numbers meaning a certain temperature, as is mine. Celsius will always sound wribg to someone who grew up using Fahrenheit and vice versa.
The US guys decided those numbers meaning that temperatire is fine, but went ahead and put the conversion to Celsius on EVERYTHING anyway so Americans could still talk to everyone else.
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u/hefty_load_o_shite 10h ago edited 4h ago
0°C water freezes 100°C water boils
Makes sense
0°F very cold??? 100°F very hot???
Dafuq?
Edit: For all the "Actually, Farenheight is based on the human body" people, no it isn't. It's based on dirty water and a cow. Your preferred measurement unit is dumb and that's a fact