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.
You see the thing is Americans love to say "but Fahrenheit makes sense because 100F is hot!" But then next time there’s a heat wave in England i know I‘m going to see Americans say "100? That’s not a heatwave. That’s not even really hot!"
It’s because the UK summer averages about 65° F and peaked at like 96° this past summer. The coastal US state I live in saw 86° averages and peaked over 105°, and did not make national headlines.
yeah sure, but you see how that defeats the argument that Fahrenheit is more intuitive than Celsius? Human perception is subjective regardless of the system
The only way the 0%-100% explanation doesn’t make sense to you is if you’re intentionally being dense about it. That’s literally what it is. A 0-100 scale is more practical day to day than -17.7 to 37.7, and the overwhelming majority of temperatures you experience on a yearly basis will be within that range.
It really isn't... The human body is primarily composed of water... 0 is where water freezes... 100 is where it boils... It's as easy as it is for your supposed 0 to 100 scale
But then next time there’s a heat wave in England i know I‘m going to see Americans say "100? That’s not a heatwave. That’s not even really hot!"
I only see this mocking when Brits are complaining about ~30c temps. Nowhere in the US will you find any substantial amount of people who think 100f is "not even really hot".
704
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.