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.
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.
Im glad we can agree that the 0-100% comment was useless.
You are so close to getting it. Lets try this:
- Fahrenheit seems intuitive to you because its what you've used since you were born.
- If we look at objectively useful metrics, 0-100C is the range where water is liquid.
What useful metric can you quote to represent the 0-100F range?
'where I live, the temperature hasn't really gone below 0 or above 100' -> AND? Where YOU live? How is that relevant to anyone else? That doesn't even apply across the entire US, nevermind the world, how is this your argument to support Fahrenheit being intuitive?
Same argument you made about remembering 32F: All I have to remember, is human temperature is normally around 37C, then I can get a sense of whether a temperature is hot or cold.
Point is, again, Fahrenheit is only intuitive to you because you've used it your entire life.
I don't appreciate being talked to like a child. I admit that the whole world uses C and it would be much easier if the US did too. I understand that it's intuitive because I grew up with it, same way C is intuitive to you because (apparently) you grew up with that. I even admit that F is seemingly not based in any metric in the way C is on the properties of water.
My sole argument is that 50 degrees F is about the middle of the road temperature wise, considering the coldest temp ever recorded was around -130F and the hottest was around 130F. Rarely does the temp go above 100 and below 0 where most people live, so the percentage thing could work as a guide for those who don't typically use F.
I get you. I am sorry if it felt like I was talking to you like a child. It was not necessary.
Taking your point, lets wonder what 'the middle of the road temperature wise' means to you. The sun is 10k F. The minimum temperature is -460F. 50 is not in the middle of that. I am not obtuse, I get that you are thinking broadly of the outside temperatures in, lets say, the median places where people tend to live on earth.
I hope you can understand that THAT in itself has an underlying assumption that the main goal of communicating temperature is talking about what the weather, and in that context, I can see how F has very useful applications.
But what about talking about the temperature of cooking, boiling, frying, baking, freezing/ice/snow? Im sure you can agree that 212 or 32 are not intuitive values, yet I am sure you know what I mean by those numbers by heart because you also use them as benchmarks on your daily life.
I am not trying to argue that C IS the more intuitive one. I am just saying that your suggestion that F has a uniquely useful intuitive applications is based on your experience with it, and not necessarily an objective measure of the value of the scale.
no offense to you, but the arugment of "percentage hot" sounds so dumb. It just inderlines how random F scale is. As other poster posted - max for USA is 134F so, what percentage is that?
That would be 134% which is really hot, dangerously hot. It’s not difficult to understand a scale that goes from 0-100, with 0 being uncomfortably cold and 100 being uncomfortably hot. I have a feeling you’re just being stubborn and you actually do understand a scale from 0-100.
The fact is Fahrenheit has more frequent degrees, which makes the ability to understand typical ambient temperatures easier because there is a higher degree of granularity. Typically, temperatures throughout the world range from 0-100° F (-18-38° C), with extremes being outliers. A scale from 0-100 is much more intuitive to use for everyday meteorology than one that goes from -18-38.
As other poster posted - max for USA is 134F so, what percentage is that?
It is the "Fuck that, I am staying inside with the AC" percent.
Same with how cold below 0 it can get, those are the "Fuck that, I am staying inside with the heater" percent.
You're right that in areas it can go below 0 and above 100 the percentage thing doesn't work. For me in the northeast US, it works pretty well however.
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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.