I'm not sure I agree with the take for farenheit. It's an arbitraty choice, and to me who grew up in a country that uses celsius, I find that far easier to understand and farenheit may as well be random numbers to me.
Whatever your grew up with will always seem more intuitive for most people. But given that I grew up with Fahrenheit, the whole “0 is cold as fuck, 100 is hot as fuck” thing works for me.
"I grew up with a completely different scale, so this scale makes no sense to me!"
Well no fucking shit.
I was trying to be polite as to not trigger Americans which generally happens when you critique Imperial measurements. The post makes no sense to me as it assumes that Farenheit is correct for humans to communicate temperature. The post should read.
Celcius is basically asking water and most humans how hot they feel, Kelvin is basically asking atoms how hot they feel and Farenheit is basically asking me how hot it feels because I didn't learn the others.
I know someone who knows both "natively" and celsius is much more logical to them because 1. kelvin has the same steps as celsius so for any science its much easier 2. freezing is 0 celsius so for weather(the thing you use temperature most commonly for) its really useful. Same with cooking.
I grew up in Canada, but in a temperate climate area on the border with the US. Winter? Use Celsius. Summer? Use Fahrenheit. For me Celsius makes a lot more sense right around 0C. After about 15C my brain switches over and starts using Fahrenheit. I like the Fahrenheit scale from 60-100F for gauging the summer months. The Celsius scale isn't granular enough. It feels like there's a big difference between 18C and 22C versus the comparable 64F-72F. But I also was taught early a quick and dirty conversion. C to F, double and add 30. F to C subtract 30 and divide by 2.
I don't think I can tell the difference if something is only one degree apart in Celcius, let alone Fahrenheit.
Comparing an 18C day to a 19C day, for example, I challenge anyone to notice a difference. A 64F to 65F day? Good luck.
I agree with the Celsius scale making sense around zero. Water freezing is probably one of the most relatable, quantifiable examples of a temperature point for the most humans. However, lots of people don't live somewhere that it snows, or even own a freezer.
So what's the most common touch point for people? I'd go with water boiling. I can't really think of what sort of person who did not have exposure to that at some point. That should be the zero point, the common denominator.
So humans feel cold at 0F and hot at 100F? I dont think thats true. Humans start quickly dying at something around 32F and 180F. Fahrenheit is complete nonsense. It has nothing to do with humans. And considering humans are mostly water Celsius seems a much better fit.
So humans feel cold at 0F and hot at 100F?
In aggregate this is absolutely true, though not the point anyone is making.
Humans start quickly dying at something around 32F and 180F
Humans will die of dehydration or heat stroke quite quickly at temperatures well below 180F. In fact that's far hotter than the hottest recorded temp on Earth (~135F/56.7C) (not including human-made environs like a sauna or outliers like an active volcano) so I'm frankly not sure what point your even trying to make here.
Fahrenheit is complete nonsense. It has nothing to do with humans.
The latter statement is manifestly false. Fahrenheit was originally supposed to have 90 degrees as the average humans body temp (no clue why 90 and not 100). Due to inaccuracies in measurements of the time, It was later changed to 96 and then 98.7. Still no clue why not just 100, but the fact remains it was based on human body temps. The zero point was selected using the freezing point of a brine mixture. No real defending that one, it was pretty much arbitrary.
And considering humans are mostly water Celsius seems a much better fit.
But we aren't just water. In any case, humans are rarely at boiling temperature. My ideal temp scale would have 0 at water's freezing point and 100 at a humans body temp.
Humans start quickly dying at something around 32F and 180F.
They do? 32F is 0C, it very routinely gets below freezing in many inhabited parts of the world, including the US, and people get along just fine with some precautions. Likewise with 100F (not sure what 180F has to do with it). So yeah, 0F and 100F are around the extremes of what humans regularly experience. (though it does, of course, get hotter and colder in some places).
Same.
Not to mention that the 0-100 range thingy really depends on local conditions. I mean, depending on where you live, there are parts of the scale you'll never use.
I've never in my entire life lived in a place where the lowest temp got anything close to 0°F.
My range of values is more -5°C - 45°C, or 23F - 113F.
23F for me is already fucking cold, and 100F is nowhere near fucking hot anymore (thank the entire humanity for climate change).
So whichever scale, for me they're still just a bunch of numbers. But at least Celsius is used in "science, bitch!"
I don't know if this'll help, but I find it interesting. Fahrenheit was designed to make creating thermometers easier. You pop your new thermometer into some ice water, call that 32, pop it in your mouth, call that 96 (human body temperature is actually 98.6, but these weren't the most precise instruments), and then you can just keep dividing the space between them in half until you get 64 degrees.
Obviously Celsius is more scientific and practical in modern times, but I think Fahrenheit is fascinating, if nothing else.
I don't understand your logic. I could just as easily change your text to say
Celsius was designed to make creating thermometers easier. You pop your new thermometer into some ice water, call that 0, pop it in boiling water, call that 100, and then you can just keep dividing the space between them in half until you get 100 degrees.
I group up with F, I find it far easier to understand. Celsius is slightly less random, but someone still arbitrarily decided it should be 0 to 100 for the liquid state of pure H2O at sea level. It could have been based on any other number of ranges.
I'm biased living in a °C country, but water seems like a better choice than anything else, since water is a common element that we can easily observe its phase changes and those phase changes effect how we have to interact with it on a daily basis.
Although if I was to improve it I think I'd base it on the temperature range that salmonella can grow, as that seems like it might be useful to be able to remember more easily 😂 🧑🍳
Fahrenheit was not an entirely arbitrary choice: it was defined based on two points of reference that could be measured at the time: the freezing temperature of an ammonium chloride brine is used as 0, and the best estimate for the average human body temperature is set at 96.
Over time, as the freezing point and boiling point of water at sea level atmospheric pressure proves to be more accurate reference points, the Fahrenheit scale was adjusted to provide exact conversion to Celsius.
Are you telling me they were able to measure those things, but not the boiling and freezing point of water?
Sure, let me just whip up that ammonium chloride mixture and travel somewhere where I can get it close to freezing so I can know the zero reference of that scale. What, did the just carry that NH₄Cl around for convenience?
Fahrenheit was proposed in 1724, Celsius dates back to 1742, so there wasn't that much time between the two.
At least personally I think the 0 to 100 scale with the average global temperature being somewhere in the mid 50s I think makes sense. Sure there's some people in warmer places and some on colder places that will say 0 and 100 farenheit aren't that bad but for people in a more temperate environment it works as a good scale. But yeah I do agree at the end of the day it is whatever you grew up with and it doesn't really matter that much. It's just that for temperature there isn't as concrete of a reason to switch to metric compared to lengths and weights.
Of course it's all pretty much arbitrary. But I think the point was more "celius puts the scale of heat levels of water heat from 0 - 100, farenheit puts the human feelings scale of heat from 0 - 100"
One of those things is more specific than the other.
Fahrenheit measured human body temperature (which he thought was a constant) and called that 96 degrees. We now know normal body temperature is about 98.6 degrees F, but back then, his instruments weren't as accurate. The number 96 was chosen for its divisibility. It has many divisors (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24, 32, 48, 96), making it easier to mark subdivisions on the thermometer.
It's a scale partly defined by human body temperature, which is, I think, the point.
There are many stories on how Fahrenheit came up with the scale, the body temperature one is just one of many. It's no more true than the one where he took the Romero scale as baseline and multiplied it by 4 to get rid of the factorial.
Wait, he chose 96, or he measured it?
A useful way to think about it (and I think what the OOP is saying) is to think about it as a scale from 0-100. Where 0 is like the coldest humans can deal with and 100 is the hottest humans can deal with. Obviously this isn't strictly true (it gets to like 115 in death valley) but as an imperfect generalization it's pretty useful.
Ssshhh. Just give it to us. We Americans don't have much else left
Yeah it’s less human based than Celsius since humans survive equally on the sides of 0 (-40 to 40)
100 F is roughly a human's body temp. (Actually 98.7 avg, but close anyway)
0 F is goddam cold. (This one's pretty arbitrary ngl)
That probably isn't very helpful.
Fwiw, Celsius isn't much better if you didn't grow up with it. 0 C is pretty cold, 100 C can give you severe scalds. The actual range the people will encounter in weather in their day-to-day lives is all over the place regardless.
Perhaps we are destined to stay divided
I'm UK based and ~0°c to ~30°c (32-86f) covers 90% of the year for celcius. It's still pretty unhelpful but I don't think that feels any harder than using Farenheit in day to day use, I agree that it's largely all arbitrary, but that's as good of a reason to just use that one that's scientifically useful too.
Why does it have to be based on weather? There's plenty of other reasons to measure temperature. Some with handy reference points that lots of people are familiar with.
I love Fahrenheit, it's awesome. It's the only non-metric unit I prefer.
Edit: I just really like using it. It's great.
Edit: It's the scale I'll always prefer, just like a spring day in the upper 70s.
Edit: I'll always love it, forever.
Of course whatever you grew up with will be far easier to understand. I grew up in a country that uses fahrenheit and I find that far easier to understand and Celsius may as well be random numbers to me. But if you look at the range of temperatures experienced on earth and the systems people have used to measure other things (including the metric system.) It's clear to see that fahrenheit has more fidelity and maps more cleanly onto that range.
Never understood the fidelity argument. It's not like decimals suddenly stopped existing because we're dealing with temperature.
As far as measuring weather, they're more or less the same. Fahrenheit is handier on the high end but useless in the low (0F doesn't mean anything). Celcius is a lot more useful at 0, and then the higher temperatures are around 30-35 which is fine, but as cool.
Where celcius shines is when you start combining it with other units like calories and then Joule and Newton, etc.
Fahrenheit is roughly a 0-100 scale of "places humans can conceivably live". 0-100 scales are more intuitive than a scale from like -15 to 40, which is approximately what celsius uses for the temperatures humans can live at.
Fahrenheit has too much precision. Humidity makes the difference between a degree F virtually meaningless. 0-100 is nice but then the minus degrees don't mean anything. In F you go from already fucking cold to even colder. You can think of C being 0-30 with minus being a threshold of more serious cold, poor road conds etc. Celsius is more elegant than it might first appear. Also using it is less confusing and cringey for non-USians.
Talk about your self my lower limit is 0 °C
That is technically correct, regardless the scale you opt for.
Always leaving out the rare Rankine
Asking human atoms how hot it feels
I heard this meme.
