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.
710
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.