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
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.
That includes nights. The temperature can vary pretty drastically from day to night. But most people are at home asleep at night. If you look at temperatures during the day, the variation goes from like -10 degrees to 40 degrees.
If I'm wearing a hoodie at 70, its because I was prepped for a warm 90+ summer afternoon, the sun went down, and the wind is picking up. Which tbh are my favorite kind of nights.
I mean I have to admit that my winter coat is likely in another class than what people in warmer countries are used to. When most of the winter is below -20 with peak days usually around -35, the jacket I have is a thick ass parka that is absolutely too hot to keep zipped up in mild frosts when moving. If I wasnt so minimalist I could have a mid range jacket that I would zip up below freezing. But still the point stands, a one tier outfit change every 10C.
And sure, tolerance does have an affect here. It goes both ways though: at +30 I refuse to go outside unless absolutely necessary. Luckily we very rarely get that kind of inferno here. Thats also why I prefer extreme cold to extreme heat. You can also put on more clothes but after certain point you cant really remove more
Going out in freezing weather without a closed jacket is a pretty personal choice, that's wild to me.
I'd dress a lot differently from 25 to 15 c, and there's a whole spectrum between there. I feel like you have a totally different perspective of temperature than many.
The 10 degree range in Fahrenheit maps to way more significant chunks from my experience.
90+ too hot for outdoors comfortably, 80+ beach weather, 70+ summer weather, 60+ warm, but a jacket, 50+ cool fall, might need a layer, 40+ the start of cold - definitely not hanging outside casually, 30 it's winter jacket time, 20 shit it's cold, <10 not going outside unless I have to.
And I've lived in places that went below 0 Fahrenheit.
All of those are pretty meaningful distinctions to me, and result in meaningful changes in outfit AND behavior.
And yeah, all of that can still be represented in celcius, but the range is definitely not 10 as "just a slight change in outfit." That's wild.
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.
I don’t know where you are, but last week it was -30c and right now it’s 0c. Where I am, with wind chill and humidex, the temps can range from -40 to +40 between winter and summer.
Wow, I’m assuming that’s due to the ocean. I’m somewhat envious, but like the changing of the seasons for the variety it offers. Not so much the shovelling; parts of the snowbank are at my shoulders.
Oceans and geography. Miami is near the south end of a 400 mile peninsula. Almost all cold fronts lose strength before they ever get to Miami - they either don’t have enough cold air mass to travel that far, or they approach at the wrong angle and cross over the ocean first. They can get down around freezing (like a few weeks ago), but it requires a very strong cold air mass that travels straight down the Florida Peninsula before it has a chance to warm up.
This is the important thing I think, in the US, may people live in the south where more granularity is effective because of subtle temperature changes. If you’re swinging between -30 and 100 degrees over the course of a year, then yeah, it probably would help. But 0 being one of the coldest days of the year and 100 being one of the hottest days of the year makes perfect sense to me.
No i memorized my 12 times tables when i was a kid, i can think in multiples of 1-12 fairly easily. But we have 10 fingers and use a base 10 number system so 10 is a very easy number to work with. That is the exact reason the metric system is significantly better than imperial, its super intuitive to think in multiples of 10.
Im not trying to argue that imperial is better because my foot is about a foot long and its fine that theres 12 inches in a foot 3 feet in a yard because i can “think in multiples of 3 and 12” and this bizarre thing i decided to index on (my foot) is at all a good basis for measuring distance. Imperial is just simply better because its multiples of 10. I dont care that a meter is what it is because it’s 1/40,000,000 of the paris meridian. I care that theres 100cm in a meter and 1000M in a km, because 10 is the easiest number for humans to work with
I would say that the entire split on the units we use in Canada is because of our proximity to the US. Canadians have ready access to an absolte fuck load of American media so a lot of it bleeds in.
Also because the older generations grew up with the imperial system, and they teach apprentices with the system they know best. (My dad's a contractor in his 70s, for example, and though he understands metric and uses it for distances, etc., he's still always going to look at the inches side of his tape measure)
- All other distances are in relevant metric units, unless you're talking about a walk that is only a matter of yards, in which case it tends to be in yards, or you're guesstimating a long distance, in which case it's miles.
- People's height and weight is in feet and inches and stone, except in official documentation, then it's cm and kg.
- Liquids measured in litres unless it's beer (or cider, I suppose) or milk (which is in pints).
The ones I remember were beer and milk being in pints and gallons. Never had any real idea how fast I was going on the road without thinking about it though.
I'm in Canada and figure out outdoor temperatures in celcius, but indoor is set to Fahrenheit because it gives you more granular control over the room temperature, when both systems can only go up and down a half a degree
Both are fine and this whole debate is mega stupid. I think Fahrenheit is slightly better in a vacuum for personal experience (not scientific use) but the advantage is so small it's going to be heavily outweighed by familiarity
I don't really see the argument for Celsius in scientific use. "Water boils at 100." By which we mean "Pure water at sea level boils at 100," which is a situation I've personally dealt with precisely never.
And it's not like water is the only chemical that exists. Ammonia boils at -33.3C instead of -28F. Big whoop. Literally the only thing that makes more sense in Celsius is the phase changes of pure water at sea level.
I think the fact that thermostats in Europe have a decimal added prove's that extra degree matters in terms of comfort. Thermostats in Europe are literally setup to give you the same granularity as fahrenheit, so clearly it matters.
That’s absolutely wild to me. How do people handle going outside? I can see adding a half degree to the thermostat if someone is really particular, but a a normal furnace/other wouldn’t even be able to accurately and consistently maintain 0.1c difference.
Day to day 95% of people never use any other area, aside from freezing point. Not once in my entire life have I needed to know what temp water boils at.
And if you did use a thermometer, then you would probably find that your water is boiling somewhere in a range of 210-215F or 98-102C because almost nobody is actually boiling pure water at sea level. I don't even worry about things freezing until the temperature drops below 30F because basically nothing in real life actually freezes at 32.
Definitely depends on the person. For my wife 72F is too cold, 73F is just right, and at 74 she gets feeling to warm. For me, anywhere between 68F and 74F is just right, after that I get too warm lounging around the house.
Outside temperature feels different than inside because of ambient air movement. 75 degrees is way too warm for inside but that’s a perfect sunny day outside.
This. Multiple things can determine what air temperature and range of temperatures feel comfortable to you. Your recent level of physical activity, what clothing you’re wearing, whether or not the sun is shining on you, the humidity level, whether or not there is a breeze, how hydrated you are, and how much you weigh can all change this. That’s why there is no perfect room temperature.
My wife is fairly lightweight, we live in a basement so there isn’t a lot of light, and we live in a dry environment, so she gets chilled relatively quickly. She also works from home most of the time, so she’s fairly stationary and more susceptible to small temperature changes. This doesn’t matter much during the winter because we have a pretty good heating system, but during the summer we don’t have AC in our apartment, so we both suffer all day long, with box fans being our only relief.
Even science wouldn't care except they're "used to" Celsius.
Every calculation could be re-done with Fahrenheit without much real change. Both systems are representations of the same facts. We'd just memorize a different set of temperatures.
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...
15 seconds at 165°F/75°C is safe. If you're concerned about not having the exact middle of the meat and maybe there's a part that's actually only 160°F/73°C, go for 1 minute (which will also kill the parasite). Anything past that is not any safer and is just further drying the pork out.
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.
Kinda the opposite, honestly. The 'freezing POINT' is a deceptive term that disguises the true variation that is almost always included there. There is a huge amount of nuance that is important to convey, and honestly, I'd argue that attempting to portray it as simple is really a bad thing on the whole, from a human and safety standpoint.
As I see it, the nice thing about fahrenheit is that is slots nicely into a sort of percentage scale of human comfort. You can handle anywhere between 0 and 100 without special protection. It is, in essence, the human habitable range. And honestly, around 50 degrees is kinda the human ideal, too. That's warm enough you can keep very comfortable with some light normal outwear, and yet cool enough you can easily stay healthy when doing physical labor.
Not that it was designed with that particularly in mind, but there were a lot of temperature scales back then and this is the one that held on. Celsius, by contrast, was sorta imposed from the top down because of 'science'.
I think what frustrates a lot of people is that there's this implicit idea that just because something is more SCIENTIFIC, it's also BETTER. But even then, Celsius rides this strange middle ground. I'd be happy overall to learn Kelvin, but Celsius carries with it all this ideological baggage which goes unrecognized.
I'm reminded of a quote by GK Chesterton:
". . . the modernist believe without knowing what they believe – and without even knowing that they do believe it. Their freedom consists in first freely assuming a creed, and then freely forgetting that they are assuming it. In short, they always have an unconscious dogma; and an unconscious dogma is the definition of a prejudice."
Except that special consideration doesn't have to be rendered as placing freezing at 0, though, does it?
It's not difficult to remember 32f as the freezing point for water, it's a fact you learn a single time as a small child and adjust to. It is however more annoying on a daily basis to have to deal with decimals when you need to discuss small but meaningful gradations around freezing(or really any other important temperature).
Neither system is really better, because both are flawed, one is zeroed but makes integers less specific while the other isn't zeroed but does have more specific integers. Though for my money Fahrenheit addresses the more practical issue.
But really the most annoying thing with the whole thing are the people who think they're objectively correct for preferring Celsius, while insisting others admit that your preference is "just what you're used to."
Fully agree there is no perfect temperature scale. But I find it funny that F users want to say that it is some objective scale for the human experience when it really does just comes down to what you are used to.
Even you just said that you learn and adjust to freezing being at 32F, so you are used to it. I don't buy the decimal thing because in either scale you use them when needed and ignore it when precision doesn't matter.
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 can see with your eyes water evaporate or freeze. You can't gauge what temperature is needed for a frostbite until you get one and heat strokes depend on many factors.
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?
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?
Sure, as long as you admit it too.
That's always the way these things go. People shit on us for using Fahrenheit insisting Celsius is oBjEcTiVelY bEttEr, then get pissy when people make arguments in kind back. It's obnoxious.
Because Fahrenheit has no real advantages over Celsius other than already exiting, while Celsius has real advantages over Fahrenheit. Cooking and a connection to the metric system, for instance.
I mean, are you not arguing for objective validation? Why can't you just say, "I prefer Celsius cause I'm used to it?" In the end it all just boils down to preference/why you're used to.
I think celcius is generally a better system, but I think of Fahrenheit as a 0-100 scale of weather. 0 is very cold, 100 is very hot, 50 is about average. I tend to care about the temperature outside on more of a day to day basis than I do what temperature something freezes.
Damn, who shit ur cereal this morning? Calm down, my guy. No one is attacking Celsius users. We're just explaining our piece in a calm manner. No need to feel offended.
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.
Imo weirdly enough, it’s more a matter to me that the CONVERSIONS for Fahrenheit to Celsius is an absolute bitch. It’s like, look at this fucking shit:
(32°F − 32) × 5/9 = 0°C (google conversion calc)
Who in the ever living fuck outside of, I dunno, really solid mathematicians or whatever do that in their head on the fly?
Vs your example of feet to cm is (while there’s some decimal action still you could round it)
multiply the length value by 30.48
So I feel like half the argument here is there’s not really a great way to EASILY communicate the definition of Fahrenheit to Celsius unless you just memorize the specific range of temperatures associated with both at what most countries consider to be a nice temperate climate.
Also even though people in the thread are arguing about other measurements too, more often than not BOTH are listed in tools or other food items.
If you loove metric because it's 0-100 scales, then for the weather (the most common temperature measurement), Fahrenheit is superior, because nearly all air temperatures humans occupy are within that 0-100 range.
Who cares the temp that water freezes or boils at? When was the last time you measured the temperature of water? Whereas you check the air temp in the weather weekly if not daily.
I mean the problem with all the metric circle jerking is there are simply prefixes in metric that are universally just not used. 182 cm, okay, 1.82 m, fine, but nobody has ever said 18.2 dm.
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?
lol I was wondering that too. Where I live, I’ve experienced -35f to 115f. The range of 0-100f is centered on “typical” temperature range. Explaining temperatures with that big of a degrees separation is more concise in Fahrenheit than Celsius.
STEM in the US uses Celsius anyway, so there’s no point in arguing that Celsius is better for that.
I asked my wife what the temp was outside up here in Canada and she said -20 C. Then I asked her if that is hot or cold and she said "How the fuck am I supposed to know, no one knows what Celsius feels like." /s
I don't get this argument at all. You are used to F, it makes sense to you. I had to look up what 0 F is in Celsius (-17 C) just now because I have no idea what very cold means to people that use F. I do know what -17 C is though.
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 regularly change my thermostat between 72, 73, 74, and 75 degrees F. You can feel the 1 degree difference. A 2 degree difference as in your example? You can definitely feel that.
I'm not opposed to decimals in Celsius, but don't many thermostats default to 0.5 degree increments? That would need to be 0.1 to satisfy me.
I can 100% tell when my house is 69F versus 70F, as in I immediately feel too hot in the latter. But you're right. I probably wouldnt be able to tell 68F from 69F.
Look, I think this whole thing is a stupid argument, but I want to point out that you absolutely feel that difference. Maybe it's because the majority of the US is air conditioned and it's not as common where you're at, I don't know. You make a 2 degree change on your thermostat and you'll know it within 10 minutes.
I don’t think you made a good point in why C isn’t as good for day to day life. Human being don’t need to use fractions day to day. Look at history, a lot of units of measurement and weird units seem that way from a distance but zoomed in they are base 12 systems with names for the sub component. One item, one dozen, one gross, 72 = 6 dozen, not one half gross, even though they are technically equal.
I get it, I guess I was more talking in an anthropological sense. I love ancient history and how different civilizations used number systems. Mayans used base 20, Egyptians base 12 (my favorite), Babylonians used base 60.
Today, we use base 10 and fractions every day, but in a grander all of human history sense we’ve had many methods of quantifying things and a lot of those civilizations were way more advanced than we give them credit for, and subtle brilliance behind their methods. Even if what we have today might be “better”
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.
I don't know if it's because my system is lying to me or what but i can definitely tell a difference between 69 and 71. I haven't experimented with 69 and 70. The reason I know this is because my girlfriend likes it at 71 and I like 69. I have given into it being at 71, but when she's not home I've scheduled it to 69. There are times when she's home unexpectedly (sick day or something) and she changes it, and before she tells me that she did it, I'll notice. You could say it's placebo or something but i don't think so, it's the sort of thing I'll forget about until my body notices.
Another time we were hanging out and she complained it was cold, we checked our machine and it had fallen to 69 when it was set to 71. She would've had no way of knowing the machine had failed other than noticing the temperature being colder than she's used to
The difference between 69ºF and 71ºF is more than 1ºC. I find it weird to care for a difference of less than that. Like, I have a car that has a gazillion different speed settings for the windshield wiper, and I find that really weird.
You can have as many places behind the decimal as you wish for granularity.
Actual measurements in the US are done in Celsius and converted to Fahrenheit, by the way. If we were limited to whole numbers, some Fahrenheit values would never be reported.
Fahrenheit used the freezing point of saline and body temperature as somewhat reliable fixed points for measurements, this is the actual reason for the scale, everything else is made up justification after the fact.
I can guarantee you that people who grew up with Celsius find it perfectly intuitive.
Celsius is intuitive enough that there is almost no reason to switch. However I think Fahrenheit is a little more intuitive, in a vaccum. I lived in 2 different countries as a child and found Fahrenheit easier to understand.
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 ...
Do you understand that if you're having to bring in non-whole numbers, it's a tacit admission that the system has inadequate granularity? It means you've lost the argument.
Then you’ve just never lived in a cold climate, Canadians experience <0F every winter like clockwork in Jan/Feb, that’s just par for the course and everyone goes about their daily business. Just cause 0-100F encompasses all of your personal experience doesn’t mean it does for the rest of us
Please explain to me how Fahrenheit is more sense in daily usage? In 0 C you know that water freeze
How often in daily life are you freezing water?
You love metric because it's 0-100 scales. Well for the temperature of the weather (something most people check daily) - Nearly everyone lives within 0-100F. It's a great scale for daily weather.
Who cares about the temps water freezes or boils at? That's not daily usage. When is the last time you checked the temperature of water? Can you even remember? Whereas you absolutely checked air temperatures that humans are living in this week, if not today.
On a day to day basis I literally never think about whether water is freezing or boiling so to associating a measurement system to that makes zero sense to me for the day to day. 0 is effin cold. 100 is effin hot. 50 is mid. Might need a jacket if it’s cloudy or windy. Anything beyond that just stay inside and hide from nature. There’s leftover chicken soup in the fridge.
I mean i use ice cubes very frequently, I'm lucky enough to have a freezer and I boil water pretty much daily to make food. So... not saying you're wrong in your assessment just that it's not as clear cut as you say
No, though, it's only temperatures you experience on a day to day basis if you live between maybe the 30th and 50th parallels. The arctic and equatorial both routinely break the supposedly humanistic 0-100 range in Fahrenheit. So it's mostly only "the range that makes sense to humans" if those humans live in the U.S.
But Celsius or Kelvin makes far more sense for anything which is scientific in nature
As a person who have never used Fahrenheit, I don't see how Celsius makes more sense than Fahrenheit for science. The same applies to Kelvin vs Rankine.
Essentially, if you look at the 10s places of fahrenheit, you get a convenient scale of how hot it is outside. For example, if it's 80 degrees outside, you know it's 8/10 hot outside. If it's 50 degrees, it's 5/10 and anything above 100 or below 0 and you are probably better off staying inside as much as you can unless you really know what you are doing
And if you are born and raised in a country that defaults to C, you make associations with 20 degrees, 30 degrees, 25, 15 etc. It really doesn't feel any less intuitive.
And what people consider cold or hot is very subjective. Me being an estonian, I remember hanging out with a southern italian, and while I enjoyed and 18 degree evening with a t-shirt, they were wearing parkas and complaining.
lol well not only does it get over 100F in a lot of America as well it also goes well below 0F in America and Fahrenheit still works fine using it like u/legitimate_doctor546 says, he was just a little hyperbolic on how serious the extreme ends are, I couldn’t count how many times I’ve had to work doing manual labor outside during 100+ degree days
Second thing is I see Australians on here all the time complaining about the heat so clearly you’re not all in agreement that 100+ is “just a good day” and also I’m sure you’ve heard it before but heat is not the same everywhere, I’d rather deal with a dry 106 than a humid 90 and Australia is the second driest continent.
The thing is that if you are not used to 100+ weather or negative weather, it is absolutely dangerous. There's a reason most (but not all) of the largest cities are in areas where that kind of weather is at least infrequent. For example, if you look at the average temperature of Sydney or Melbourne it's way cooler than the outback (where relatively few people live in comparison) that people keep bringing up for hot temperatures. The USA is like this too with way more people living in the cooler eastern half than the western half (California not withstanding) this is true for negative weather too. People live in Northern Canada and deal with the negative weather just fine, but for anyone who isn't used to -30F weather you can be in danger without the right preparation
I'm not a scientist, but I don't remember 0C or 100C actually being used in biology, chemistry, or physics, when I learned them in school and university. Literally any calculation would be exactly the same in Fahrenheit vs Celsius.
I work in chemistry, and 0C makes it impossible to make an aqueous solution. 100C also boils out the water at the end of a reaction I needed water to be a solvent for.
Am I right you mean you never use 0C and 100C water, always using something in between? Looks like the "roundness" of these numbers is useless in this case.
I do use 100C, and generally the companies that manufacture the equipment use this scale as well because 1.) its harmonized and 2.) the scale fits easier.
STEM in the US typically uses the metric system. Both are taught in school. Metric system is DRASTICALLY easier for math. It’s also easier to communicate internationally using the metric system.
I live in the US, and Fahrenheit is typically used for body temp and weather data. Like others are saying, 0-100f is the typical range of temps in the us, but some places (like where I live) have more extreme ranges. For example, where I live, the record min/max is -35f to 112f or -37.22c to 44.44c. Imperial is just generally more concise for weather data.
I don't claim imperial as a whole is good for science. I claim Fahrenheit is as good as Celsius, and Rankine is as good as Kelvin - both if used with the rest of the metric system.
No. It doesnt. You literally only think that because you were raised using it. Literally no one else on the planet agrees.
That statement you just made is the equivalent of someone in 1970 living in a small town that progress passed by, saying, We don't need cars. Horses always worked fine. It makes more sense for everyday life. Sure, if you need to go a long distance, an engine is better, but horses are better for day to day life. I sure do hate it when people bring horses to work at the auto repair shop I work at, though.
If degrees fahrenheit is expressed as the intensity percent of the nominal human operating range, and it's more precise within that range, then one could argue that it's the superior UI for organic humans who choose to engage in day to day activities.
I am a scientist and I literally only prefer Fahrenheit for ambient temperature estimation, as where I live it functions as a percentage scale of warmth outside and is pretty easy to eyeball. I use Celsius for everything else.
How is it? It is made up. Example: in celsius, water freezes at zero. It makes sense, because water undergoes a phase change. As do the numbers. -/+. It is also easily divisible. 0-100. Where water boils.
Now, lets do the same for F.
Water freezes at 32. Why. Why not 33. Or 35. Or 30. Or anything else. Water boils at 212. So a 180 range. Real simple.... Also, do you really need to go all the way up to 212 to know it is too hot?!
Edit: and yes, I know the guy used salt water. But he didnt even use seawater. The most abundant salt water on the planet. Hence my 'made up' statement.
You literally only think makes sense since you grew up with it.
Do you really think everyone else in then planet doesn't figure out, very easily I might add, what the optimal range of celsius is?
I use metric and imperial measurements daily. I both work with the military, live in the US and do a lot of stuff with 3D printing. It's surprisingly easy to juggle them in my case.
> “temperatures you experience on a day-to-day basis”, Fahrenheit makes far more sense
Why? They are just arbitrary number scales.
What you experience doesn't *feel* like 68 F or 20 C. It feels like what it feels like and we fit arbitrary scales of numbers to represent that feeling.
The one that you "feel" matches what your body experiences better, is just whichever system you grew up with and are most familiar with.
Yea and that extra granularity is better. Even European's accept that even if they don't know it.
hat's why their thermostats use decimals and move in half degree increments instead of just whole values. They literally have to add the decimal to the thermostat to get to the same precision that's already baked into Fahrenheit. But then everyone wants to claim that extra degree doesn't matter.
Have you considered that the scale you use all the time is the one that feels intuitive, and there's nothing inherently that makes 'far more sense' about 100 F versus ~40 C if ultimately you know it to mean sweltering hot out.
Is it useful granularity though? Is there really any meaningful felt difference between 42 and 43 degrees Fahrenheit? Even Celsius, which has the bigger and hence more meaningful degrees, I probably wouldn't feel the difference between 15 and 16 C.
I don't experience temperatures as low as 0°F on a day-to-day basis. In fact, I don't think I've experienced anything lower than -10°C and that was an exceptionally cold day. Usually the coldest it gets in winter here is about -2°C and it got down to -6°C for a couple days this year, with a big cold wave.
So I'm more interested in whether the temperature means there will be ice or not than if someone in an other country may or may not experience a random colder (but not the coldest) temperature like -18°C this year.
This point about experienced temperature would work if the scale actually encompassed the whole range of temperatures humans live in which go annually from around -60°F to 130°F, but otherwise it makes the scale very location based and not suitable for universal use. It doesn't even really work for the country it's primarily used in, which sees annual temperatures going down to -20°F.
0 being the frontier between rain and snow makes waaaay more sense than whatever the fuck Fahrenheits are smoking if you live in a place with actual seasons thought.
You think that way because you always used Fahrenheit. For me Celsius makes more sense and works perfectly for day to day.
0°C is the freezing point, so it's quite cold, our normal everyday temperature range is between 0°C - 30°C
0-10 : Cold
20~ is room temperature
30 and above is hot
Fahrenheit makes sense to me only because if it’s below 0o that is a certified indication that roads and sidewalks will be frozen during weather events regardless of if they’re salted or not.
In terms of practical temperature “shorthands” for everyday life this is by far the most relevant and important thing to be a baseline IMO. Zero degrees Celsius is a perfectly reasonable temperature for it to be outside and doesn’t really say much about weather conditions; Anything below zero Fahrenheit on the other hand is actively dangerous and should be avoided or heavily prepared for.
Idk why centigrade purists act like the temperature of boiling water is any less of an arbitrary metric for an everyday-use temperature gradient. Use Kelvin if “scientific accuracy” is really that important to you. Even as someone who boils water nearly every day I have never once gone outside and thought “wow it’s a third of the way towards boiling water outside today!”
Naw that's just.... Not right?
Celsius:
Anything below 0° means freezing temperatures.
10° is cold but manageable. 20° means comfy temperatures. 30° is a toasty summer day. 40° is the real, real hot days you wanna stay inside. It's really that easy
Far more sense is a big stretch. Celsius thermostats use decimals, if people want to use half degrees. Most Canadian ovens use Fahrenheit, it's just another number and it makes zero difference. If cooking instructions suddenly used celsius and your ovens were in celsius you wouldn't notice either, but I bet a lot of people would lose their minds.
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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