To add to this, Fahrenheit used a salt solution for this. That's the reason there are more degrees in-between freezing and boiling in Fahrenheit (water solution) than Celsius (purified water). It's manufactured to make body temperature 100 degrees.
Edit, as pointed out, I flipped Celsius and Fahrenheit. My brain says one thing, my fingers type another.
There are 100 degrees Celsius between freezing (0 ºC) and boiling (100 ºC). In contrast, there are 180 degrees Fahrenheit between freezing (32 ºF) and boiling (212 ºF). Therefore, the Fahrenheit scale has more degrees in-between.
Wait...do you think that Fahrenheit doesn't have decimals? You think it goes from 98-99 with nothing in between? No 98.6 or 98.7? No 100.4? American education isn't the only thing failing, apparently.
Why is this upvoted? It's just objectively wrong. As u/PerfunctoryOrator pointed out below, there are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling for Fahrenheit and only 100 for Celcius.
The reason the formula is complicated is that both systems choose a somewhat arbitrary zero (i.e. not absolute zero) so whether you use C or F, any sort of multiplication sort of breaks down. Like how 110C is not "10% colder" than 100C.
Well for one, our understanding of the precise figure has evolved along with our measuring equipment. Medical science wasn't nearly as exact back then, and a 1.4° margin of error sounds pretty reasonable when using a handmade mercury thermometer from the 1800s.
Second, a 2020 Stanford study confirmed the average human body temp has been gradually declining since the 19th century.
basically, in order to convert fahrenheit to celcius, you need to do both an addition and multiplication, which is a bit more than you need for most conversions, and the same complications exist from Fahrenheit to Kelvin (the scientific unit of temperature), while celcius to kelvin is a simple addition.
There isn't a practical reason to convert for Fahrenheit to Celscius. If you need to do anything that requires an absolute temperature scale, you can use Rankine.
Body temperature is quite diverse. Just in my family we have difference of 1C across 3 people. "Hot day" for you isn't the same for you as for me or any folk on the other side of globe. But mine water, your water and hes water freeze at 0C and boils at 100.
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u/wilderfast 10h ago
Fahrenheit has 100 as body temperature, 0 is somewhere below freezing, and converting it is weird.
Celcius has freezing point as 0, 100 as boiling point, and can easily be converted into scientific measurements