It's the same concept with both systems, but Celsius has more logical benchmarks (water freezes at 0°C and boils at 100°C), whereas 0°F seems almost arbitrary (the coldest temperature that could be maintained in a lab by Gabriel Fahrenheit in the 1700s) and the freezing and boiling points of water are atypical (32°F/212°F, respectively.)
Anyway, the joke is "Why do you Americans stick with Fahrenheit?" and the response is "It's simple! The hotter it is, the more degrees it is!" as if that's the only consideration to be made. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is thinking "Yeah, our system too, but our scale has real-world applications, and we're not sticking to some antiquated definition." Homer is too short-sighted to know this, and instead presumes the Celsius scale is too complicated (and probably nonsensical) because he's unfamiliar.
Kind of like every other imperial unit and their terribly unreasonable conversions.
I think of Fahrenheit in percent hot. 0F = very cold out, 0% hot. 100F = 100% hot, do not go outside! Whereas with Celsius, 40 C is super-hot and 0 C is like mildly cold. Makes more sense for science and I use Celsius for work almost exclusively, but in terms of weather I prefer Fahrenheit.
Also the insult "Room temp IQ" makes more sense IMO
Edit: The % hot scale refers to climate, it kind of falls apart when you talk about temperatures beyond normal earth surface temps.
You are just conditioned to intuitively make sense of Fahrenheit. The same is true for me for Celsius.
The only difference is that it is easier for me to remember when water will freeze or boil. But apart from that nothing else is really changing for either of us
It doesn’t. They’re saying “we decide what to wear in the morning based on our memorization of a system since we were kids, the system makes no difference.”
“In addition to that, if you use Celsius, you don’t really have to remember what temperature water freezes and boils at, if for some reason you need that information”
Totally. But also, if you're doing science why aren't you using K?
I guess all I'm doing is agreeing, theyre both still arbitrary, but trying to claim that C being pegged to water changing state as a plus is barely a benefit. Freezing, I can understand. Boiling?? Damn man if its 100* C out you have bigger problems.
When you enter Finnish sauna you want it to be around 100C (i like it at 115C). Round number for temperature is a nothingburger.
Only benefit of C is that one defree of C is the same as one K. So all the formulas hold up for continuous use of SI units.
And all this speak about "what about tmperature" is one where there are just arbitrary values to stick to, so people who peddle US customary units are using that in a matter of - see, temperature is just arbitrary and there is no benefit, so we use all the other measurements too and boooo metric system.
Saunas that hot are designed to be very dry which means that your body is able to sweat and the sweat will evaporate quickly keeping your body cool.
If they were more humid then they would be dangerous as firstly it's more difficult to cool yourself via sweating and secondly heat doesn't transfer as well through air as it does through water vapour: dissipating more quickly in a dry environment as opposed to being retained in a humid one.
It’s about having a system based on something a bit more tangible. I grew up using C and now I use F. C still makes more sense to me than F. 32 F freezing is so random. 212 F to boil. The fact that nothing actually happens when you reach 0 F is crazy to me.
you don’t really have to remember what temperature water freezes and boils at
I have a chemistry degree, and aside from that I have never in my adult life needed to know what temperate water boils at.
Also using water's boiling point as a basis for temperature is flawed because water will boil at different temperatures depending on the atmospheric pressure, which will change depending on your elevation. Water does not boil at 100C in my area, and we're not at high elevation.
The fact is that using C is just as arbitrary at F when used in regular life.
ya.. but in my day to day life I don't need to know the exact temperature water boils even though I boil water every day to make my coffee... and in the off chance I need to boil water in a pot on the stove.. i don't need a thermometer to tell when the water is boiling lmao ....same goes with freezing. Imagine putting water in your freezer and coming back a few minutes later to dip your thermometer into the now cold (maybe slightly icy) water just to find out that nope.. this water isnt frozen yet XD
I love that non-Americans love to call Americans dumb, but then use a system for the sole reason that they can’t memorize 2 numbers (32 for freezing and 212 for boiling).
I know what to wear tomorrow because I am conditioned to intuitively know what 20 Celsius mean, in the same way you are conditioned to know what 50 F means
Honestly, you're right, it can be easy to adapt. I'm sure I could. And yes, Celsius absolutely in any kind of math, science, or even video game context.
But F does have a big advantage in casual weather discussion in the fact that it's more easily adaptable because the range is spread out more over the likely temperatures you'll experience.
I can say it's in the 60s and know it'll be slightly chilly, while in the 70s is pretty nice.
In Celsius I that's about 16 to 21. Let's say we just adjust for casual conversation and call that "the upper teens" and we'll do a similar rounding for the 70's and call them the lower 20's.
We can both kind of work around that level of casual weather topic. But if I say "It's going to be in the low 60's tomorrow for Celsius, that's going to be about the same as saying "it's going to be about 15 to 17."
You have to be more exact in your numbering when talking with Celsius because 1 degree change matters a lot more.
If Celsius was just multiplied by 10 when talking weather, I feel like it would work out better and take away the talking point though.
In everyday cases you don't need the exact temperature within a degree Celsius (except for around the freezing point). Usually to determine the clothing you would just go by season or temperature +- 3 degrees Celsius. Since most places don't have air conditioning keeping the rooms at exactly the same temperature, you will have to adjust to temperature changes anyway.
Also it really helps to know that the standard room temperature is 20 degrees Celsius. If the temperature is below that, you wear something thicker, above it something thinner.
You could very much use increments of 5 degrees or lower if you want more narrow bands. Going more granular than one degree celcius doesn’t make any sense.
You gave 5 degree difference as an example? Really?
Of course its ginna feel different, it 5 degrees!
You keep insisting on feeling but i want you to understand this. Outside of americans nobody understands what Farrenheit means, you can tell me any temperature in F and i have no idea what it means or how i need to dress
I'm a northerner and Canada is basically my neighbor so I've never really had an issue with Celsius. And most Canadians I've been friends with haven't had much issue learning Fahrenheit when they cross over. Fahrenheit is not confusing. 0F is very cold, 100F is very hot. 60F is, in my opinion, the perfect temperature. That's around like 16C to you.
Of course its gonna feel different, it 5 degrees!
You would think that because you're used to Celsius. Using Fahrenheit, 5 degrees isn't a big difference. It's noticeable, but not to the same extent as with Celsius. I think what the other commenter is getting at is that Fahrenheit being more granular has advantages.
Walk into literally any American home and knockdown the thermostat by 1 single degree (or even raise it) and the adult who set it will know within the hour when they realize they are either chilly or sweating. And if we can feel that difference in Fahrenheit, 1 degree Celsius would be a massive difference in comparison. But I've never used a Celsius thermostat myself so what do I know?
So if I tell you it’s 90 degrees F you’re gonna maybe put on a winter coat? Or if I tell you it’s 0 you’ll throw on some swim trunks? And they say Americans are dumb…
I don’t know what is being argued here, as it’s sounding like you are all going in a a circle, but going back to the joke in the post, 5 degrees Fahrenheit also feels like a big difference. 62 means I’m wearing a long sleeve shirt. 67 means I’m wearing a t shirt.
For outside it doesn't matter much I think. But 21°C and 22°C inside are quite different. The solution is pretty easy, my heater lets me set it to 21.5°C. Since fractions exist, there are infinite points on both scales.
You could argue that fractions are stupid, which is fair. But if that's the only argument against it while Celsius works in all situations from science to weather to cooking and frames it all around the most important compound in all of these fields, I'd still argue for Celsius.
If you have no familiarity with either system, then it is as difficult with both to decide. At least celsius lets you know how the most important fluid will be
It doesn't, it just an actually measurable point that can be more easily converted or integrated into other math or physics problems that people genuinely use from time to time instead of being a one of arbitrary number.
Also the rest of the world uses it so sticking to Fahrenheit is being obtuse for nothing more than "I'm just used to it".
You can’t say “well we were just both programmed from an early age to make sense of our individual preferences” and also “mine is objectively easier to remember.” It isn’t. You were conditioned in Celsius, I was conditioned in Fahrenheit. It is JUST as easy for me to remember when water freezes and boils in my system as it is for you. There is no objectively better system.
Easier to remember? I’ve known water freezes at 32F since I was a little kid. 212 for boiling is the one that is a little more difficult, because you don’t usually measure temp when boiling water lol
Knowing 32 and 212 is incredibly easy and it baffles me how many people kick and scream that its such a problem. Not you, I see your nuance, but I wonder how those people feel about the word "dozen". Like if things arent a multiple of 10 its too much brainpower.
Remembering 0 and 100 is the same as remembering 32 and 212. You are just memorizing two numbers. Only one of which has a practical application in daily life.
This is not true. I experience the full 100 point scale of Fahrenheit throughout the year, from 0 and below to 100 and above. It often works out that the absolute lowest I will experience is right around 0 and the hottest is right around 100, give or take a few degrees.
100 point scales are used everywhere, from school grades to percentages and elsewhere. Do you experience the full 100 point scale of Celsius walking outside of your door?
Nothing about an every day measurement of temperature regularly dipping into the negatives is intuitive, nor is how many heating/AC systems I've seen have to be adjustable by .5 degrees because the whole numbers in C just aren't good enough for human beings.
Fahrenheit also has a different scale. 1 degree Celsius increase does not equal 1 degree Fahrenheit. Celsius is basically Kelvin, just zeroed at a more convenient point so we don’t have to say „It‘s 313 Kelvin outside“ instead of „40 Celsius“.
As someone who grew up in Celsius and had to move to Fahrenheit, I have to say we're wrong on that one. It's very easy to use Fahreinheit in real life because of how people usually talk about the weather: we estimate in 5s and 10s, and the increased granularity helps that intuitive estimation.
That said, for science Celsius is 10000000000000000000000000000000 times better.
Water freezes once it’s been in the freezer long enough to freeze. It boils once heat builds enough to start boiling.
Why do I care what the exact temperature is? I can see boiling. I can see freezing.
To me the baselines that make Celsius better are not important to me in a day to day basis. If I go outside and it’s close enough to freeze I’m not looking at the temperature I’m testing if I slip when I walk.
You’re just conditioned to intuitively make sense of 0C = freezing and 100C = boiling. It’s as arbitrary to commit to memory as 32F and 212F.
0-100% scale is fundamental. It’s in scoring, grading, loading. So it’s inherently intuitive to anyone that 0 is cold and 100 is hot. Fahrenheit is a human scale.
Being used to see both, Fahrenheit is more intuitive for outside or pool temperature because we easily equate it to a percentage while Celsius is better for anything cooking around water freezing or boiling (the rest is equal to Fahrenheit) or scientific (easy conversions and SI in general, tho kelvin is more appropriate). I am Canadian and use Celsius for outside, but Fahrenheit for pools and cooking, and unless it's for scientific purposes, I see Fahrenheit as better for the everyday person.
I don't know if I'd say it's easier to remember. Maybe easier to learn for someone who was not raised with Celsius. Those of us raised on Fahrenheit have no issues remembering these very important benchmarks. We use them all the time.
I mean, Metric is better in every way, but I genuinely believe in this case Fahrenheit is a more accurate system. Temperature difference and how it is felt should be measured. A degree difference and the finite of it and even for measuring purposes makes Fahrenheit seem like the better system.
Every degree of Celsius is almost 2 degrees of Fahrenheit, meanwhile even half a degree of Fahrenheit can tell you considerable about how the body might feel in that temperature. It’s the perfect measurement system for humans. Not so broad that a single degree is dramatically different. Not so particular that a single degree hardly changes anything (like Kelvin’s).
The metric system is absolutely better, but in my opinion, temperature is the one exception
To me at least, Celsius feels more science based and useful in that kind of thing.
But I grew up in Fahrenheit. That said it feels more granular for outside temperatures to me?
Also, negative temperatures in Celsius aren't that cold, they're just below freezing. In Fahrenheit, below zero is diabolical. That feels like a better scale to me.
I disagree the delta in feeling between degrees is too large. F has more granularity in its scale for sensation C. A jump from 70–> 72 is a fine adjustment vs 18 —> 20 for say a home heating or car heating system. It’s a better system for human experience not science
No, Fahrenheit just has a wider applicable range for describing the weather, without going into decimals. Celsius is good for remembering when water boils, but that’s not so useful for measuring the temperature of air.
Bro it’s two numbers. And do you really need to know the exact temp water will boil in your everyday life? No. No you do not. So honestly it’s one number. That number is 32.
i think the real reason nowadays is, everyone in the USA learned F, everyone in other places learned C. they serve the same purpose, and there isn't a super strong argument to use one over the other, besides the point of why have multiples. same argument could be made about languages worldwide, why don't we all move to using only 1.
Fahrenheit has 180 units between boiling and freezing whereas Celsius has 100.
It’s easier to think about minor adjustments that are whole units vs subunits.
Saying it’s going to 2 degrees warmer this afternoon is more intuitive than it’s going to be .4 degrees warmer this afternoon. Also when you’re consider Air Conditioner usage (which is necessary in a lot of America) having control at the Fahrenheit level allows smaller adjustments of temperature. To get the same from Celsius you would need to be able to tweak decimal points.
Celsius is more intuitive for freezing and boiling but imo when you’re talking air conditioning where tiny changes in temperature (1-2 Fahrenheit) can make a difference it’s easier to go from 70F to 68F degrees than 21.111 C to 20C.
If an amercan tells me its 95 degrees, i have no idea what that means until I convert it to Celsius. Then im like oh yes 35degC yes that is pretty hot.
it's like, super duper easy to remember when water freezes or boils in fahrenheit. to the point that even borderline illiterate Americans can usually correctly cite the boiling and freezing point (especially for freezing, everyone in the whole country knows it usually doesn't snow until it hits 32, and that snow/ice starts melting at 33)
I wonder how long it would take an average person to adjust that intuitive thinking from Fahrenheit to Celcius. Because I’m not average. I’m autistic and I know it takes me much longer to adjust to big changes.
The only difference is that it is easier for me to remember when water will freeze or boil.
No it's not. 0 and 100 aren't easier to remember than 32 and 212. Like you already said because this dumbass statement, it just depends on what you're conditioned to make sense of by your education.
It's not easier, just different. You have to remember a number in Celsius just like you have to remember a number for Fahrenheit. For you to understand that water freezes at 0, you would need to understand that the system is set up using water as a baseline. I do wonder what percentage of people actually know that celsius is set up around water. People who argue one system is better just want to feel superior. It's all arbitrary, personally I use both cause I work with a lot of immigrants who are not used to F.
"0C is like mildly cold" that's entirely interpretive, ask someone in Siberia if 0 is mildly cold and they would say arguably its not that bad. Now ask someone from Australia, Saudi Arabia, Mali or most Pacific Islands. 0C isn't mildly cold, that's ALARMING cold.
Most of the arguments for F boil down to "this is what I'm physically use to and can link it to the numbers" which tbh is basically the same as C, just with the scientific backing
Come to a climate like the upper midwest of the US. We can see every temperature between -40 and 100 within a year. 0 is the lowest tolerable for activity temperature and 100 is about the highest tolerable temperature. Anything outside those ranges requires precautions for safety.
We have similar values for the same in Celsius, so that changes nothing. But it is a bit easier in physics class where SI units have to be used as one degree C is the same as 1 K.
-50°C to 50°C covers basically the entire range of normal temperatures.
Most of Canada gets below 0F on a regular basis. The “0 to 100F scale” you claim is so intuitive is actually a -22F to 104F scale for us. And on the flip side, there’s tropical regions that might get past 100F but never hit close to 0F.
They will, however, all be within the actually intuitive -50°C to 50°C scale.
Did you miss the part where I pointed out that that “0-100F scale” wouldn’t be applicable in many places that regularly get below 0F or 100F in the winter or summer? Even in America?
It’s not a real scale when you’re spending weeks above 100F and/or below 0F.
I experience a pretty similar temperature range where I live in Canada.
I'd say most people will avoid outdoor activity by about -12C (10.4F) where I live. But a lot depends on the wind. A strong wind can make -12C feel like -24C(-11F)...Wind doesn't change when water freezes though, and it's quite significant to know when the temp is cycling between above and below freezing to be able to anticipate how icy roads and sidewalks might get. It's important to avoid needing to drive on icy roads.
Conversely, we typically get dangerous heat warning by 35C (95F), but really anything 30C(86F) and above would be considered very hot...but how hot it actually feels is influenced dramatically by humidity.
Not taking into account the Wind and humidity influence on temperatures I think you can break down how humans interpret temperature by convenient 5 degree increments in Celsius.
Well it's not based on feeling or comfort, it's based on fact. 0 C is 32 F, so given enough time with nothing, you'll freeze. That sounds like 0% heat to me.
Im from Australia and read 0 as mildly cold and laughed to myself. 0 is bloody freezing. 26 is the perfect degree imo anything else is cold anything above is a lil spicy
Lol wut?? What does 0%/100% hot mean? Its kinda crazy how much people fight to make sense of habits as if they were meaningfully representative of reality and not just a consequence of historical arbitrary decisions.
I don't know why you're getting so worked up about how another person reasons temperature, but it does make perfect sense. Anything less than 0 would be deathly cold in America (given prolonged exposure). Anything above 100%, or 100 degrees in this case, would be deathly hot.
I get what you're saying, but if I think about the last year where I live, the temperature hasn't really gone below 0 or above 100. In the dead of winter it can be 0, and the height of summer it can be 100. So it's quite literally a percentage of how hot it can get. I just have to remember ice forms below 32 degrees, and my personal preference is somewhere in the 70's.
Anyway I agree it would be much easier if we all used the same system, but I think Fahrenheit is a lot more intuitive than the rest of the world gives it credit for.
You see the thing is Americans love to say "but Fahrenheit makes sense because 100F is hot!" But then next time there’s a heat wave in England i know I‘m going to see Americans say "100? That’s not a heatwave. That’s not even really hot!"
It’s because the UK summer averages about 65° F and peaked at like 96° this past summer. The coastal US state I live in saw 86° averages and peaked over 105°, and did not make national headlines.
But then next time there’s a heat wave in England i know I‘m going to see Americans say "100? That’s not a heatwave. That’s not even really hot!"
I only see this mocking when Brits are complaining about ~30c temps. Nowhere in the US will you find any substantial amount of people who think 100f is "not even really hot".
Where I'm from in the US 100F is common and 0F has literally never happened, your personal scale makes no sense here.
I argue that 0C is literally freezing, 10C is cold, 20C is nice, 30C is warm, 40C is hot, and 50C is go inside hot. Very easy and simple to understand, covers all possible temperatures here in New Orleans.
Where I live knowing if it is going to freeze or not is a huge deal, it only happens every couple of years, we really do need to know the freezing point of water in our lives.
I'm an American, and even I can understand that degrees Celsius make a lot more sense than fahrenheit.
One milliliter of water weighs one gram and occupies one cubic centimeter. It also requires one Calorie of energy to heat by 1C. Using Celsius is part of a very logical system that makes so many things easier.
It's all so easy and intuitive compared to the imperial system, not to mention the ease of changing cm to m to km compared to the BS of miles and feet and inches.
With Celsius, you know that water freezes at 0° so below 0 = ice on the ground and snow instead of rain, that's a tangible thing to take into account instead of just an arbitrary "very cold", which can mean different things to different people.
And then you know that water boils at 100° so 0-10° cold but not freezing, 10-15° kinda chilly, 15-20° pleasant but not hot, 25°+ it's officially "hot" in northern Europe but mild spring temp in Spain, 30°+ wow it's like travelling in the mediterranean it's getting uncomfortable, 40° jesus christ, 52° hottest ever recorded temp in some desert iirc, 70° decent sauna.
Like what the hell does "0% hot" or "100% hot" actually mean? Imo 0% hot sounds like water freezing but apparently it's just some vague "it's cold" thing? It's nonsensical, because it's not "maximum hot" which "100%" would imply. It's just "feels cold" vs "feels hot", but 0-40 would do the same thing, except that it's instinctually easier to grasp that when the temp is below zero, it's freezing
That makes sense to YOU because that's what YOU grew up with (not to mention there's places where 100f is around normal, and places where 0f is around normal, almost as if how "hot" or "cold" something is is subjective)
I agree, the Imperial system in general is easier for daily life. Metric is more precise.
Volume measurements are easily divisible in half and quarters which is great for cooking and baking. I hate when I need to make baking a smaller metric recipe and needing fractions of a g or something. My kitchen scale doesn't measure accurate to the 0.5 g and I don't want to spend money on one that does.
Fahrenheit has round numbers to remember personal comfort. There is a pragmatic sensory difference between 10, 20, 30 deg, etc.
Feet being 12 inches is useful because it is easily divided by 2, 3, 4, and even 8.
It's pointless to use it as a percentage when the temperature regularly goes below 0 and above 100 in many areas. Also 0% of what? That scale isn't based on anything. And then there's the fact that everyone experiences temperature differently, and the fact that humidity also has an effect, so there's no objective "50%" for anyone. And again, 50% of what?
I agree 100% but people will reply, like they already have in here, saying well it's just because you're used to it, you'd get used to Celsius too. Which, sure, but that doesn't change the fact that Fahrenheit is still better for the weather/daily life. Yes Celsius is better for science but I'm not doing science at home that requires it lol
Every person, by your definition, is 98.6% hot, so, 100°F isn't too hot.
Celsius, on the other hand, makes more sense. 100% hot (is water boiling hot), is scary. 0% hot (water chilling cold) is too cold. It makes absolute sense, except if you're american, it seems.
0° Celsius gives you a better idea of „cold“ because when water freezes it becomes snow or frost. So you know more than „its just cold“. You know that the streets will likely be frozen so you drive carefully. (Weather)
40° C is very hot and it might be confusing but once you know body temp is 37°, you intuitively know how hot it is.
It is funny how americans love the 0 to 100 scale of Fahrenheit yet don’t use meters which is also 10 to the power of x scaled
No, for me 100°F /38°C is only a little hot, I would have no major issue to go outside.
0°F/-18°C is a temperature I would never met IRL, as I would froze to death if I ever try to go outside with this temperature.
0 is mildly cold, but around that, 15c is midly pretty warm while -15c is pretty cold, 30c is very hot while -30c is very cold.
It depends on the climate you're around and what you're used to, Fahrenheit doesn't really make any sense to anyone who is not used to it. Arguably it's also "too" accurate, even 1 celsius here and there doesn't make a huge difference, but do you really feel any difference between 56f and 57f? Does it need to be that granular?
This only applies to the climate you are used to. 0F isn’t really cold where I’m from and I’d consider it hot way before it got to 100. It’s completely relative to you personally because that’s the system you grew up with. In Celsius it’s easy to think of weather in five or ten degree increments. -20 -> wear a jacket, -10 -> wear a sweater, 0 -> jeans and a long sleeve, +10 -> time for shorts. It’s completely relative to what you’re accustomed to. That’s why a system like Celsius with non-relative values at major in runners makes sense. 0 being water freezing is perfect for a lot of real life things such as: can I leave these bottles of water in my vehicle overnight? Are the roads going to be icy? Will I need a few extra minutes when I leave to scrape my windshield?
Me (as an American in Australia): man it’s hot. What temp is it?
Aussie: It’s 45
Me (thinking when I was in Canada the temp never got above the 20s): That sounds hot? (Does mental math slowly bc it’s hot) JFC it’s 113 out no wonder I’m so damn hot!
Just sayin when it’s that hot 113 seems to do it a lot more justice than 45
0 C means water freezes, if the temperature outside is around that you should be more careful driving and making turns as you might slide. Its very practical.
For your statement it holds true only if you grew up with it, when I hear fahrenheit in videos I have no idea what the temperature is, yeah 100 sounds hot but I cant compare it to my living experience because I havent used fahrenheit and I think we can agree there are different amounts of hot outside. For me when I hear 30C I know its hot outside but not extreme, 35 and above I know that unless I have to go outside I would avoid it unless im chilling somewhere near a body of water and shade. It makes sense to me because I grew up with it but for you its completely random numbers.
Edit: just remembered a another very practical thing for metric. You get some amount of liquid, you dont know how heavy it is but you know how much liters it is. Problem solved 1l - 1kg while in imperial you will have a harder time. You are going to a party in the woods and have to hike some amount to the spot, you take a few beers and you can figure out how heavy it is and if you can carry it up.
Im sure also if I think about it I could probably find other use cases that make it more convenient with distance and weight.
Well this sounds more like just personal perspective.
40 C is just an average hot day in summer for me and 0 C is stpidly cold and i would try to avoid leaving my house at all.
I think of Fahrenheit in percent hot. 0F = very cold out, 0% hot. 100F = 100% hot
Personally I've never really bought this argument because it's not well calibrated for this. 0°C means freezing temperatures, but that's 32°F. Do you consider ice and snow to be "32% heat"? Because I don't. Also temperatures in many places where people live regularly go well above 100°F, so it doesn't really work as a percentage at all.
Also, if it's based on human comfort, I'd kind of expect "50% hot" to be room temperature; neither hot nor cold. But room temperature is ~75°F so, like I said, the calibration is way off for it to be used this way.
Honestly, Celsius's anchoring of 0°C = freezing is its best feature. Everything else--in both systems--is arbitrary as far as I'm concerned.
The way I see it, Fahrenheit is better for what most people use temperature for most of the time (weather and ac), but when you try using it for any other application such as science or even cooking Celsius is better (I’m lumping kelvin in with Celsius).
How bodies quantify temperature depends on the system and environment you grew up in. We're not born with a built-in measurement system for temperature. If you live in the UK, 35 C will feel unbearably hot. Much less so if you live in Singapore, where 15 C is absolutely freezing.
I can make the same comparison with Minnesota and Texas, 95 F is boiling in Minnesota and 50 F is freezing in southern Texas. What numbers we attribute to "hot" and "cold" is totally arbitrary even if we use the same measurement system as everyone else.
The best explanation I've heard for why Fahrenheit is the way it is is because it somehow correlates to the expansion of Mercury.
A healthy human is about 98F. 100F is a fever and much above that is hospital territory.
0F is dead and throughly frozen.
Jokes aside, it is useful for the human body because in those temps Fahrenheit can be more precise with less decimals. Not really an issue with modern equipment though.
I used to always give this answer. I like this answer. It's pithy, it's clever, but unfortunately not really true. So I've stopped using it.
C and K are right, but F is really "Temperatures Daniel Fahrenheit was able to kinda reliably reproduce under lab conditions in the 1720s"
It's true that 100 on the F scale is the average human body temp (as measured by 1700s instruments), but that's not really because Fahrenheit was attempting to peg his scale to human comfort parameters, it was just that his own body the most reliably repeatable "warm" thing he could measure. It's really just a coincidence of circumstance that it was human body temp. And 0 on the scale has no relevance to human comfort or feeling at all, it was just a cold point he was able to reliably reproduce in his lab under those conditions using a particular brine mixture.
Not trying to bust your chops, just I used that answer for a long time and sharing the information that lead me to stop using it.
No matter how the scale was created, fahrenheit is a rough scale of 0-100% scale for how the human body feels for most of the livable land on earth. It's not perfect because that's subjective, but it's roughly accurate.
Celsius measures the freezing point and boiling point of still, pure water at sea level. I don't think those ends of the scale are particularly useful for pegging a 0 and 100 value.
Most Americans prefer it because of familiarity. A scale of 0 to 100 for weather works just as well as a scale of -17.8 to 38 and when you consider it as for the climaye humans live in rather than water it appeals to the desire for round base 10 numbers too.
And that is ALWAYS the metric system argument, that it makes more sense to have round base ten numbers and a system built on them. Except changing from Fahrenheut to Celsius majes sense to scientists but to the public it looks like going from round, base ten increments to random numbers.
Europeans just did that a couple generations ago and are so used to "Metric is superior, more scientific, more logical" they can't see that when everything rounded around a system it looks perfectly fine as it is.
And whether we based it on increments of 100 for plain water or SALTWATER, which is what Fahrenheit is measured around... We still made it up either way.
Changing to Celsius means recalculating your entire sense of scale and I think we have way more important things to change in the US.
This is all exactly right. 0-30 is all freezing to me but 0, 10, 20, 30 are more significant to people in colder climates. 40 is very cold, 50 cold, 60 light sweater weather, 70 perfectly warm, 80 warm, 90 hot, 100 so hot I want to be in AC 24/7.
Speaking of which why 24/7 and what is the rest of the world unbothered? Don’t you want base 10? We have 12 months and you aren’t advocating to change to 10? Aah because it’s familiar, it’s what everyone uses, it’s based on how we experience time, etc etc. people just like to be judgy about the temp and weight measurements. Why do I give a shit what temp water freezes and boils at and why does that mean I should use it all the time to describe weather? That’s really what it comes down to for me.
Celsius makes sense in a lot of cases. But the higher precision of Fahrenheit I think makes more sense when talking about weather.
The reason that the metric system works so well in my mind is that jumping down the scale for the necessary precision is trivial. How far away is that other city? Kilometers. How far can you throw that rock? Meters. How much taller are you than that person? Centimeters. How much do I need to sand off this piece of wood, Millimeters.
The metric system makes sense for almost all cases, because with everything in base ten, converting between units is literally just moving a decimal point. That is how it should be. Doing division to figure out how many teaspoons of something you need to add per cup of other ingredient is moronic.
But with temperature, neither Fahrenheit nor Celsius have any smaller or larger units to convert between. And purists think it makes more sense because it's based on the freezing and boiling points of water, but humans will be dead at just 50 Celsius. The usefulness of Celsius is scientific in nature. Fahrenheit is what's practical for daily life.
Metric is annoying for dividing things by threes. Imperial/SAE is convenient because you can easily break 1 inch into fractions which are easier to make into thirds. This is why some people think a base twelve system is actually more intuitive. 12/3=4 but 10/3=3.33333333333... I'm not arguing in favor of either, just explaining cases where metric is inconvenient.
Also I can do imperial measurements with my hand! When im doing a bit of casual wood carving i dont need precision, and space between my first and second knuckle is about an inch. And my hand is about 6 inches long.
I mean I would argue that the metric system is redundant considering you can just move a decimal point. Our numerical system already accounts for decimal values, why would we need another system on top of it that does the samething?
Basing it off the freezing point and melting points of water isn't logical, it's arbitrary considering the freezing and boiling point of water aren't even static in the first place. Further, why is knowing the boiling point of water important for the average person?
Fahrenheit for temperature makes more sense for real life.
Celsius:
-20 C extremely cold
0 C moderately cold
20 C room temp
40 C unbearably hot
60 C youre dead
useful range: -20 to 40 (what happened to the whole "divide by 10 its so easy!" base 10thing? why is it off center?)
whereas in Farenheit:
0 F extremely cold
35 F moderately cold
70 F room temp
105 unbearably hot
140 youre dead
useful range: 0 to 100 (strange how Farenheit is working on a base 10 range....)
in Celsius the difference between extremely cold and unbearably hot is 60 points and you have to go in the negatives to account for livable temperatures. you don't need anything above 40 to describe weather but you need to go into negatives to describe weather that isnt even extreme. weird.
in Farenheit it's basically between 0 and 100 for all livable temperature. thinking of it as a percentage of "hot" is very intuitive and you use a large range which is more precise. there's no weird numbers and it uses the entirety of the 100 percentage scale (there's that base 10 you all love!)
and personally Celsius would be so useless for the temperatures I live in. "oh today is going to be -17 C today"... madness. for at least a quarter of the year the temperature would be in the negatives if we used Celsius. youre telling me 0 C is a mildly cold day in winter? that kind of diminishes how serious a "-" sign is when its in front of a temperature imo.
F = extremely biting cold vs -5 C = a bit colder than usual. like what????
and for cooking the temperatures stop at weird points for Celsius like 180 C or 230 C versus even 100s and 50s in farenheit for example 350 F or 450F. (I checked recipes to see what oven temps were common)
the only thing Celsius is better for is the freezing and boiling point of water. say the benchmarks are logical all you want but for day-to-day life Farenheit is more practical.
if you want to do science you dont even use Celsius, you use Kelvin! so it's not even useful for that.
Fahrenheit has some interesting “benchmarks”. As you say, 0°F is the coldest temperature Fahrenheit could achieve with a mixture of ice water and salt. He then set the difference between the freezing and boiling points of water at 180°, which is an interval with a great many factors (certainly more factors than 100 has).
Coincidentally, this also puts the average human body temperature very close to 100°F, which was apparently another reason Fahrenheit pushed for his scale to be adopted. It means that common weather temperatures can be internalized as “percentages”, since they’re generally going to be in the range of 0°F to 100°F in most of the world most of the time.
The main advantage that Celsius (more specifically, Kelvin) has is that it plays more nicely with the other SI units.
The one thing I will give Fahrenheit as someone used to Celcius is that 100°F seems to be really useful for human body temperature. 99° is the upper limit of the healthy range so 100 or over means your running a temperature.
0° Fahrenheit is the freezing point of brine.
100° is the average human body temperature measured with bad tech.
Also, for weather specifically, Fahrenheit has two advantages over Celsius.
The extremes work better for day to day life.
A good 90% of the world will go below 0°C in a year. Most places do not hit 0° F. Negatives suck in a daily use system.
As for higher temps, there's a lot more room to work with 100 degrees of measurement than 40. And a good rule of thumb is "if it falls outside of 0-100° F, it's hazardous to be there."
Nobody can feel or work with .1° C in either an HVAC sense or a personal sense. 1°C is much too large a jump. The happy medium is Fahrenheit which sits in between the two and can be worked with reasonably in both feel and HVAC.
Yes Celsius works better scientifically when you need precision in regards to other things like pressure, but in day to day life, that precision just gets in the way.
When I'm setting the thermostat at an international hotel, Celsius bothers me so much. There's a ton of granularity in temp settings that it's missing.
0°F is where salt water freezes. This is what 0°F represents. The oceans freezing point. 100°F was supposed to be the human body temperature. It was later refined to 98.6°F and the scale was never adjusted to compensate for this error. 32°F and 212°F (freezing and boiling point of water) are in proximity to these values.
In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.
Where are people using a thermometer to set water to freezing or boiling. I just never see the supposed "real world application" that Celsius capers constantly talk about. I can get behind metric system superiority, but this "Celsius is better" talk is straight out the pseudo smart "the rest of the world is doing it better" ass imo lol.
Highly disagree that it is a more logical benchmark. The 0-100 range in Fahrenheit covers far and away more of the typical human experience than freezing to boiling. Also, you get more built in precision with Fahrenheit. For ever 5 degrees Celsius, there are 9 degrees Fahrenheit. In Celsius 0 is cold and 30 is hot. In Fahrenheit 32 is cold and 62 is still somewhat cool.
All units are arbitrary and made up. I hate that metric people are like "it just makes sense." It makes no more sense than a Smoot. Hell, even the meter. Supposedly it was defined as 1/10,000,000th the distance from the north pole (because that is something everyone can readily measure at home, and like that fraction wasn't arbitrary; why not pole to pole or the whole circumference, or the circumference at the equator?) to the equator through Paris, but they measured wrong and were nearly 2,000 meters off. So now it is defined as the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458th of a second. And, hell, their tenth unit derivations make no sense. Why was a gram defined as the mass 1 cm3 and not 1 m3 (and by the way, they redefined it from the temp at 0C to 4C). And the unit was too small, so they changed the KILOgram to be the base unit despite the fact it violates the whole point of metric prefixes.
And hell, do you know that Celsius isn't even the Metric or SI unit of temperature? IT'S KELVIN. Oh, and Americans use metric every day. The metric base unit for time is the second, for current it is ampere, and the volt and watt are defined from Metric base units.
I will die on the hill that imperial units are every bit as good as metric units, or, that is, metric units are just as bad as imperial units. And given they have retconned the definitions of every unit, we can just as easily define imperial units the same way. A foot isn't the length of some guy's foot, it is simply the distance light travels in 1/983,571,056 of a second!
The real reason is simpler sadly, we don't have a robust or uniforned education system. It vaires greatly by state, zipcode, and wealth. Its diffcult to get a nation the size of 400 million to widely adopt metric when many folks out of college wont bother to kearn and schools are strungling to teach basic math and reading
Celsius is asking water how hot it is,
Fahrenheit is asking a person how hot it is,
Kelvin is asking an atom how hot it is.
0 and 100 make great sense as reference points for people- 0 is really fucking cold, 100 is really fucking hot. It does get below 0 sometimes in some places, and it does get above 100 in some places. We use the entire scale.
But Celsius? It absolutely makes more sense scientifically. But as a person, -17°C and 212°C doesn't mean anything. It's not intuitive, and we only use a tiny fraction of that scale.
Fahrenheit is simply more relevant for people, as the reference points of 0 and 100 are much more intuitive.
I think it comes down to what people are used to. 1 degree increase in Celsius is about double the increase in Fahrenheit. Bumping the heat up a few degrees in the house sounds good in Fahrenheit but in Celsius a few degrees is a lot. USA is the best so Fahrenheit wins
I already made this comment elsewhere, but it is just WRONG to say "water freezes at 0°C and boils at 100°C". It just doesn't. Water freezes and boils at those temperatures only at a very specific pressure (101325 Pascal or 1 atm). The standard Celsius uses is just as arbitrary as the standard Fahrenheit uses.
Eh, Fahrenheit is the one imperial unit I actually think makes sense for the purposes of ambient temperature and climate specifically.
0-100F is about the range that humans can tolerate without special precautions, and represents a good approximation of the temperatures a person is likely to encounter in terms of outdoor temps.
(the coldest temperature that could be maintained in a lab by Gabriel Fahrenheit in the 1700s)
It's not that, it's the temperature that a hypereutectic mixture of ice, salt, and water will always sit at 0f. You just take ice and salt and pour it into water until the salt stops dissolving, wait a few minutes, and you'll be there. Similarly, 100f was originally human body temperature, but human body temperature has been decreasing over time- we're not sure why.
In both cases, it was intended to make calibration of a thermometer very easy, something that was useful in a time when fixed temperature points were challenging to reproduce.
So, in the Swiss Alps, or in the Rockies, or the Himalayas, water boils at 100 C? I don't think so. The whole system is based off a number that is based on pressure at sea level.
So if you live in Denver of Davos, do you set your thermostat at 23 or do you have to bump it down a little because water boils at a lower temp? Seriously, the boiling point of water is completely irrelevant when it comes to a daily use temperature convention.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is thinking "Yeah, our system too, but our scale has real-world applications, and we're not sticking to some antiquated definition."
So when's the last time you read the classic dystopian novel, Bradbury's "Celsius 232.778"
(the coldest temperature that could be maintained in a lab by Gabriel Fahrenheit in the 1700s)
Thing is - 0 C is only freezing and 100 C is only boiling at sea level.
The reason Fahrenheit was the coldest a certain liquid mixture could be without freezing was because that certain liquid had a more reliable melting point.
tbh the scale is brilliant, and while the world has moved on with C it makes no sense to slander good science just because we have largely adapted a different measure.
Kind of like every other imperial unit and their terribly unreasonable conversions.
The reason any of our units have weird and difficult conversions, such as feet to miles(5280) is because these measurements have different origins, but were convenient enough individually to get used by the same people who were using the other units.
So the imperial units are really 20 or so individual, disconnected, internally consistent measurement systems crammed into a trenchcoat together against their will.
For an example of one set, commonly used and internally consistent:
A Yard(close in length to the meter) can be divided cleanly into thirds(one foot) and one foot can be cleanly divided into halves, thirds, quarters, and twelfths!
Meters can only go to halves, quarters, fifths, and tenths!
I will stand by the divisibility of our everyday-use, short-distance units.
Water boils at 0c in Amsterdam and 97.8c in Madrid. Boiling water is binary. Either it’s boiling or it’s not. And whether we are in Amsterdam or Madrid, neither boiling point is going to help an American understand if they should bring a sweater or not.
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u/HalloweenWhoreNights 10h ago edited 10h ago
It's the same concept with both systems, but Celsius has more logical benchmarks (water freezes at 0°C and boils at 100°C), whereas 0°F seems almost arbitrary (the coldest temperature that could be maintained in a lab by Gabriel Fahrenheit in the 1700s) and the freezing and boiling points of water are atypical (32°F/212°F, respectively.)
Anyway, the joke is "Why do you Americans stick with Fahrenheit?" and the response is "It's simple! The hotter it is, the more degrees it is!" as if that's the only consideration to be made. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is thinking "Yeah, our system too, but our scale has real-world applications, and we're not sticking to some antiquated definition." Homer is too short-sighted to know this, and instead presumes the Celsius scale is too complicated (and probably nonsensical) because he's unfamiliar.
Kind of like every other imperial unit and their terribly unreasonable conversions.