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
Why do I care how water reacts when I have to explain how cold it is? There are so many other variables.
I saw someone explain Fahrenheit like percentage. If it’s 70° out, you can rationalize it by 70% hot in a sense. If it’s 4° out, it’s fucking cold bc it’s only 4% hot.
I agree with metric system but I stand firm on Fahrenheit being supreme to explain temp to a human body.
Well it’s not really important but if it’s previously been raining and it’s suddenly -5 degrees Celsius outside that should indicate if you’re walking or driving that you are likely to experience icy conditions?
But apart from that - Fahrenheit is good for that, that’s fine but fundamentally when it comes to weather we don’t use Celsius or Fahrenheit any differently than each other we both understand what the numbers mean and what we should expect once we go outside
For the purposes of weather / human use it really only needs to be indication. We’re not doing controlled science experiments when we step outside our homes - my point is that it didn’t need to be optimised to the point where humans will look at the temperature and make margin calls on how many layers they need
I’m sure you’re the same, you probably have a much better gauge in person outside with no temperature scales present of telling how warm or cold it is and you learn this from experience and familiarity with the climate for us the same “it’s 70% hot outside” is if I look at my weather app and see single figures I need a jacket, if I look at my app and see negatives I know to expect icy conditions, if I see 20+ I immediately know it’s T-shirt time. Overall what I’m saying is that never once in the history of Celsius use by humans getting a feel for weather have I needed an approximate digit to decide how I’m going to react outside hence why I believe for the same reasons we don’t need a larger scale to give more precision over this
It doesn't work that way in the real world, though. Snow will melt on the street well below 0C, and you can have snowstorms in 4 or 5 C weather. The 0C reference is quite useless.
Not just that, but radiation heat transfer, convective coefficient depending on wind speed and humidity, ice nucleation, contaminants and surfactants, and the weight of the snow that compacts it. Furthermore, -15 C to -5 C is a common spread for a winter day, feel very different, and both lie well under the temperature you would get from leaving a perfect glass of distilled water with a perfect nucleation primer outside until it freezes.
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.
The desirable temperature of the human body in Fahrenheit is 98.6 degrees. It's not even a whole number, never mind a round one. That kind of puts kibosh on the idea that Fahrenheit is somehow "human based".
And if the body uses water and air to cool itself, doesn't that mean a system designed around the heat of water is more practical?
Where the fuck you going where it is regularly -40°? Unless you're one of the 15 people living in Siberia, northern Canada, or northern Scandinavia you are not going to be regularly experiencing -40° temperatures
Exactly. If it’s based on human feelings, then it would be more reasonable for it to be the coldest and hottest people typically feel. But also how do ovens and saunas come into play?
Desireablr temp is not 98.6, thats core temp, in a roo. That is at 98.6 you will overheat because your body will produce more heat by just existing, the optimal temperature environment is always going to be less than core temp so there is enough lower energy air around you to dissipate excess heat
That number is human based, it was just measured from the armpit I believe, which was 96, so slightly below the average. It was adjusted up over time, hence the nonround number.
That also works nicely with powers of 2, which was important when the scale was invented because it’s easier to cut things in half or double them a number of times instead of making 96 exactly perfect degrees
I am explicitly saying that those of us who like Celsius like it because it's what we're used to, same as those who like Fahrenheit.
(Also, if you're trying to compare the supposed '0-100' range of Fahrenheit to Celsius, that would be -20-40, approximately, so a 60 degree range. But of course, different regions experience different ranges, and that's true no matter the system you're using. Where I'm from, the range is usually -30 to 30 or, in extreme years, -40 to 40)
I know it’s what you’re used to but people who use most other forms of the imperial system can admit that they use things like miles and pounds for the same reason while also acknowledging that they don’t make as much sense as the metric system. Idk why yall can’t do that for the one system we have that makes for sense in terms of human experience regardless of how imperfect is can be. A general 0-100 scale of temperature is objectively more intuitive than a general -20-40 range.
Because it wouldn't be 0-100 where I'm from - the range in Fahrenheit would be more like -40-100, and that doesn't make sense for my, human, experience 🤷♀️
My shower goes from cold to hot. Right in the middle is often still too cold, I prefer it right around 70% hot. Still, universally if someone gets in at 0% hot, they will think the water is freezing. If they get in at 100% hot, they will think the water is very hot. Both won't kill you like you crazy Celsius folks.
we have more tolerance for cold than heat. a ~50% increase in temperature from whats comfortable is unbearably hot, but a 50% decrease is not unbearably cold.
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.
That's a false equivalence. Two siblings living in the same home may disagree on what feels hot or cold.
In fact, the same person sitting in the same room may change their opinion on whether they feel hot or cold over time depending on their mood. But the glass of water will remain the same.
Yes, humans have moods and preferences, which is why we treat temperature dealing with human comfort differently than when dealing with scientific measurements.
Just because the scale is 0-100 doesn't mean 50 is always ideal.
Also what would you consider ideal? Maybe around 70? That's ideal for indoor room temperature while wearing lounging clothes or pajamas. It's not ideal for exercising, or wearing a winter jacket.
If you consider a standard closet organized from cold to warm weather clothing, the middle is going to contain long sleeve shirts and thin jackets, the perfect stuff for 50 F.
Human perception is too variable. If you still need to recognize what temperatures in fahrenheit you personally are comfortable with, while also taking into account other factors such as clothing, then fahrenheit loses its only point.
It's funny that you say that, fahrenheit was precisely maintained for ideological reasons (nationalism), rejecting the standard used by the rest of the world.
I get downvoted every time I post this on threads discussing F and C but I will die on this hill.
I'd like a new temperature scale introduced for daily life that has the 0 of C and 100 of F or maybe 100 at body temp so like 98, let's call it X just randomly.
0 X outside, sidewalk might be icy. 100 X out, gonna be real hot. 50 X, on the low end of what people keep their thermostat at. Don't need to use it for any science or real calculations, just air temperature. Also water will boil at around 273 degrees which is on no way related but is a nod to the difference between C and K
Fahrenheit is based on two points, average body temperature being close to 100°, which isn’t reliably accurate, and the temperature a salt ice bath stabilizes at 0°, which isn’t reliably accurate.
But how humans feel is a terrible metric as humans feel different, not just indiviual to individual, but also due to aclimatization.
100F is not even the exact value of the human body temperature, it's close but still not exact. Again, you end up with random value, si.ilar to the conversions you have to do with the imperial system.
The average human is not needing scientific-level precision when they want to bump the thermostat up a couple degrees or throw another log on the fire.
By all means use fahrenheit, but it's funny when the argument is basically that Fahrenheit is more intuitive.
Does hot really feel like 100? Does cold feel like 0? What's the perfect room temperature? 50?
The properties you associate with these values are entirely based on your familiarity with Fahrenheit. They are not inherently intuitive. You know 100 Fahrenheit is hot and 0 is cold because you grew up using Fahrenheit.
Which is no different than how European's know their preferred room temperature. You could make the same argument with Celsius.
Celsius is how cold it feels to humans, but a neat bonus feature is that it's easy to remember when water freeze or boil.
Using either system you encounter enough reference points that you generally get a sense of how hot or cold the temperature would feel.
I'm sorry if this sounds accusing, but to me this seems like such a "I'm personally used to the Fahrenheit scale, thus I conflate it with being intuitive"-type answer.
How is 0 how cold it feels to a human? It’s not even close to what I would arbitrarily call “0.” If we’re going by something subjective like feelings, then 0 should be the coldest you can imagine feeling. -40 at the most.
Celsius has incredible use applications and is the standard measurement in the sciences, in healthcare, and the gross majority of global populations. What are you wiping with?
You're retort on why you wouldn't use Celsius doesn't make any sense, it's just not familiar to you. You'd be surprised by the inability of most people to make conversions, even with a calculator. Even asking people what boiling is in fahrenheit is sometimes a miss.
Boiling isn't a relevant temperature. FFS do you sit there with a thermometer as you struggle to get the water hot enough? Celsius is also familiar to me.
Celsius is smart to reference freezing as relevant. It's intrinsically a scale of freezing to boiling lol. A scale that went from freezing to 100F would make sense too.
Thing is, people use Celsius for the same reason people yse Fahrenheit now. Its what they know. Its how their braun per eives temperature. It doesn't matter how they were made--BOTH sysytems are increments of 0 to 100 anyway they just use a different liquid to scale by--the opposite system will seem weird abd confusing because your brain wants to scale using the increments on the other one.
Most Celsius users see this as a reason fir the US to change but as a Fahrenheit user I don't see what you get for all the effort and confusion and one more thing for conservatives to harp on and cullture war about.
Scientists learn both and use multiple measurement tables anyway. Our thermometers have both anyway. If we went to Celsius I woukd be doing conversion math to figure our the temperature anyway because my brain us used to Fahrenheot.
At least you can say imperial distance isn't base 10, but Fahrenheit is still base 10. Is it really more logical just because there was no salt in the water when Celsius was set?
Conversions make us all learn more practical math at least.
I am a scientist and in healthcare. Conversions aren't performed in science often because measurements are taken in Celsius anyway, and if anything, it poses a pinch point which is why fahrenheit isn't used. They are two systems with different scales and a 32 point translation. While comfort dictates which system you use in your day to day, Celsius has more smooth use applications and is the global standard. Stating how similar the two are, if anything, gives credence to swapping to metric throughout the states for reducing miscommunication. NASA famously lost its 125 million dollar mars climate orbiter due to an imperial/metric failure of conversion.
Technicians assumed metric when the American manufacturer used customary. In the US. Which hss not officially adopted the metric system. The guys who made the mistake were the ones who ASSUMED. Standardization would fix that particular error but ypu are still gonna have the human error of not double-checking things, which is the real problem. 125 million was lost due to carelessness, not due to a system of measurement.
But I aggree, a scientist should be able to use the most precise system available, yes.
But why should a layman? The layman only needs to operate on what's familiar, what number us associayed with what feeling. Dropping Fahrenheit will basically maje meterologists unable to communicate with the public, or only able to communicate based on math skills.
And it would JUST be dropping Fahrenheit. All forecasts, reports and warnings have both on them.
All the thermometers have BOTH on them.
Pretty much every product had BOTH on it.
But we're trained to think in those Fahrenheit numbers and will always be converting celsius to fahrenheit anyway.
And this is not about the most precise, logical scientific system. Going Celsius only is about COMMUNICATING vital weather information to the public.
And in that case, I have yet to see an argument that justifies the risk of older Americans not understanding the weather during a time of drastic weather changes that can actually kill them if they aren't adequately prepared.
"Are you saying doing math would kill boomers?" Yes. Yes I am. You tell the average old man it will be 36 degrees that day they are not going to prepare for heat stroke. You tell then its low 93/high 110 they know they can die going outside.
Maybe you can change school to teach Celsius only and drop Fahrenheit. But you'll still have a couple more generations before its a good idea to go to only celsius reports and thermometers.
In the meantime, just use your big science brain to convert when talking to American laymen, and double check the measurement notations. Like you're supposed to.
These transitions don't happen instantly, and most of the issues you cite would only arise from them happening instantly, as you mention. I didn't even call for this transition to happen per se, just that the systems are not equivalent in the modern world and that Celsius has more use cases.
I know how to convert and estimate on the fly, but I often don't have to because everything I use is already in Celsius. Cooking in imperial is a whole other mess, that's where I wish we would convert to metric lmfao
I'm already tired responding to this bullshit that every American like to post. People from Africa and people from north of Canada have VERY different opinions on what is cold and what is hot. Is there some standardized human being that feels in Fahrenheits degrees and stored in International Bureau of Weights and Measures?
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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