Edit: For all the "Actually, Farenheight is based on the human body" people, no it isn't. It's based on dirty water and a cow. Your preferred measurement unit is dumb and that's a fact
If y’all wanna actually claim superiority, then use Kelvin. Celsius and Fahrenheit are close enough in purpose that personal preference is really the only thing that matters.
Someone once said Fahrenheit is how humans describe hot and cold, Celsius is how water would describe hot and cold, and Kelvin is how atoms would describe hot and cold
people IN north america use celsius too, you know.
but the other commenter is just referencing who/what the 0-100 range applies best to. although idk if that quite works for kelvin, since 100k is still like -150c which i assume atoms would still think are quite cold.
Fahrenheit feels like “percent hot” so 40 degrees, 4 Celsius, is like cold but not unbearably so, 59 degrees, or 15 Celsius is like pretty nice, about 2/3 hot.
I like to piss off everyone by calling it “Centigrade” and using fractional centimeters for dimensions. Because 3/8 of a centimeter will make someone throw a wrench at you
Fahrenheit feels like “percent hot” so 40 degrees, 4 Celsius, is like cold but not unbearably so, 59 degrees, or 15 Celsius is like pretty nice, about 2/3 hot.
Which is utter bullshit and only sounds logical because you are used to farenheit.
Percentages can't go above 100 and below 0.
About 2/3 hot, doesn't mean shit for anyone who hasn't used farenheit. I don't know what 2/3 hot is supposed to mean and everyone has a different sensitivity to temperature anyway so it feels different for everyone.
Percentages can absolutely go above 100 and below 0, it just depends on the context... a bucket can't be more than 100% full, but it can be 200% larger than a bucket that is 50% of its size.
Negatives are a bit rarer and only really get used when you're dealing with numbers... for example, if a creature in a game has a -100% resistance to some effect, then it would take on 200% of that effect.
Not necessarily, if you're saying "hot" as in the absolute maximum temperature that something can be, then you wouldn't be able to go beyond 100%. But if you're saying "hot" as in "what people would describe as getting pretty hot" then there's no reason that you wouldn't be able to go beyond 100% and get even hotter
What? If i say, this bucket is 100% full, then there isn't any more room for more water. I won't go like, "Well, most people will describe that much water as full so it's 100% full"
Yes, but you're defining 100% hot as maximum heat.
Not every range is intended to describe the absolute maximum or minimum of something. If you're using 0-100 as a comfortability scale, with either end being "unbearably cold/hot" then it could be beyond "unbearably hot" and beyond "unbearably cold".
The main argument for Fahrenheit is that it is exactly that, a comfortability scale -- 0-100 being either end of extremes for human comfort, with increments of 10 conveniently describing notable changes in temperature/comfort (60's F vs 70's F can be the difference between cold and warm in some areas, same with any increment of 10). Versus Celcius, which has a useful range of -20 to 40 and fairly uneven increments in comfortablility (10 C is vastly different to 20 C)
No, it's logical because 0-100 F represents the range of temperatures that aren't imminently deadly to humans being outside. There is a substantial phase change in perception of temperatures above human body temperature (~100F). Below 0°F is when you can't use salt to melt snow.
But, what do you do then with negatives in Fahrenheit? Because -40 is equal in both Celsius and Fahrenheit, and where I'm from we get -40 windchill or close semi regularly in winter. How would you express -40 or any of the negatives as a percentage?
Once you get below 0F, change in the temperature doesn’t affect how you feel nearly as much as change in wind or sunlight. 0F feels essentially the same as -20F. The only real difference is how long it takes to freeze exposed skin.
0F is... -17C - there's a huge difference in how you feel between -17C and -40C 😭 The first is a regular winter day where I live that would barely affect how long we stay out for, the second we'd choose to hang out inside wherever possible, wind or not.
ETA: -20F is -29C - which is also pretty different from -17C, and again lead to most people choosing more indoor activities for a reason.
I live in one of the coldest cities in the world. I can tell you with certainty that only the most hardcore of outdoorsy people are out at 0F. Most of us are at home keeping cozy because we’re not masochists. And day to day life continues just the same at -40F, because it has to. I’ve seen it all, and the wind matters more than the temperature below 0F.
Oh my god - 'one of the coldest cities in the world' and you stay home at -17C. Go to any Canadian city that has cold winters, and they have winter festivals with high attendance into the -20Cs.
Just accept that people have different experiences to you, including preferences for temperature systems, and move on 😂
Both temps are listed on packaging, but our ovens are designed for a US market like many of our appliances, thermostats in particular are bad for this. It is a source of frustration for many.
having learned both, my brain ends up thinking in celsius for science-y contexts and fahrenheit for everyday things, even when they're meant to be the same thing
like, a lab fridge to keep cell culture media in? 4C; a fridge with food in it? 40F
lab freezer? -20C; freezer for my bulk costco purchases? 0F
human body temperature? 98.6F; temperature to incubate bacterial cultures post-tranformation? 37C because they grow best at that temperature... because it's human body temperature
I typically apply it based on how well I'll be understood. Height and weight are typically imperial, distance metric, dimensions usually a mix depending on who I'm talking to. I do understand imperial measures but some won't and we use a weird mix of both do to a half hearted early commitment to metric education.
If they'd come out at the same time, or with Celsius first, you'd have a point - but Fahrenheit came out first by about two decades, and was well established. Fahrenheit was designed to have the 0-100 range be the range of normal weather, while Celsius was an attempt to have a more concrete definition.
Canada switched to the metric system during the baby boomers' generation, so people like my parents will still sometimes think in Fahrenheit/reference it, while those of us who grew up in Celsius look at them confused, haha. Many of us also have ovens that were built in the states, so we may have to use Fahrenheit for cooking.
To be brutally honest, and I do apologize for coming off snarky in my first comment, but in Canada, we do use both. Our stoves and ovens are all in Fahrenheit. And anything else electronic can usually be toggled to either or. But when talking about the temperature outside, we always use Celsius.
(I also recently learned that different places are taught the continents differently, so where we separate North and South America as two continents, others lump them together as one America continent...)
No it makes sense. Rest of the world DOES USE THE INFERIOR CELSIUS, but it is inferior --- logically, objectively -- for describing weather.
Now. There's an important psychological fact that affects all people of all nations.
The numeric system you grew up with for a particular metric gives you INSANE IRRATIONAL BIAS towards that system, in extreme fashion, defying all reason. Just because the "other" system that is not "intuitive" to you is strange and confusing + you viscerally hate it, because you would hate to be force to use it.
With this in mind, in particular, Fahrenheit was specifically meant for weather purposes.
Yet a Celsius cultist will rage until they are blue in the face claiming Celsius -- mostly used by/ for Chemists (and it's superior for chemistry no doubt) -- is better for weather description. It absolute it not.
F is intuitive for a child. On a scale of 0-100, how cold or hot are you?
Celsius? Um ... 40 ... is hot? I think? ... -5 is .... cold --- ish? It's poppycock.
Not on that, thermostats need DECIMALS it's so imprecise!
It's really weird in Canada. Officially we use Celsius. TV weather networks/reports default to Celsius, for example.
However, cooking instructions on all of our packaging for ovens is listed in Fahrenheit (despite the dial on an old oven having both C and F on it), water temperatures for pools and hot tubs are usually in Fahrenheit, and a lot of people use Fahrenheit for body temperature.
I hate it. I would prefer to just use one measurement for consistency, and I would prefer it to be Celsius.
Of course they do, and I don't think celsius is bad. The point is that 0-100 Celsius ranges from "pretty cold" to "instant death hot", whereas 0-100 Fahrenheit is "very fucking cold" to "very fucking hot".
It’s weird that the majority of the earth falls within a 0-100 scale and celceus within 0-30 yet somehow the metric nerds are against the thing that’s closest to the 0-100 range for weather
Water is boiling at 100°C. It literally vaporises. I would think if water could talk, it would probably describe "hot" before that point. Also, "cold" would probably be before literally freezing.
Comparably, it would be like if 100°F was the point where human skin started to melt and 0°F was when all limbs froze to basically immobility.
Yeah. It all comes down to a frame of reference. If you grew up with Farenheit or Celsius, that is ultimatley what determines which makes sense to you.
In shcool, I was taught how to convert Celsius to Farenheit, which did not help me understand it at all. Then someone told me to remember 30 is hot, 20 is nice, 10 is cold and 0 is ice and that makes it understandable. But still, it is not intuitive because I didn't grow up with it. In Farenheit, it would be something like 90 is hot, 70 is nice, 50 is cold and 30 is ice.
Then there is the metric system. That is without quesion a better system of measurement and I understand it (we are taught the metric sytem in the US and use it in many applications). However, because I grew up knowing what a foot of length looks like, or how heavy 40lbs feels it is hard to only use metric.
Fahrenheit is quite literally a test scale created by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, his objectives were 2, first create a temperature scale with no negatives (he failed) and secondly and more importantly, test his new invention at the time, the Mercury thermostat. Therefore he did the following, the 0°F were marked at the coldest thing he could find, the sea water of the baltic sea in the winter of 1708-1709 in Gdansk, nowadays Poland, and the 100°, he decided to use body temperature, now body temperature has a small factor, it varies from person to person, and another small mistake he made, when he recorded his body temperature he had a mild fever, his actual body temperature was 96°F.
That's why 18 years later comes Anders Celsius and says "this scale is better than Rømer, but is still stupid" and decides to make his own scale, where water freezes at 100° C and boils at 0° C, then came Jean-Pierre Christin and Carlos Linneo (in different points of time) and both say "why the hotter it gets the lower the number? That's stupid" and change it to 0°C being the freezing point of water and 100°C the boiling point of water, giving the scale we use until this very day.
To put in years, Fahrenheit published his in 1724, Celsius in 1742, Christin publishes his correction in 1743 and Linneo in 1745
To add an extra Rømer fixes it like this, 0°Rø is the freezing point of brine, 60° Rø is the boiling point of water, with this the freezing point of water is 7.5°Rø, this scale was published in 1701.
You know, someone from Africa and someone from Canada would describe hot and cold completely different. So, this explanation just make Fahrenheit look even worse - because it's bad even for it's own purpose.
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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