11mo ago

temperature

419 comments

Tell me that you are American without telling me you are American
- Now, now you get your People pass cancelled.
- Ok.
  "Hey. Come over and get some BBQ and food that doesn't look like sad beans. We can talk about how boring a soccer game is when one team leads and they just play keep away for 40 minutes. Man, this corn on the cob is so good. Sure glad my teeth are straight so I can eat it super easy. Anyone else enjoy having a complete global dominance on movies, tv, and pop culture? How about the internet?"
  
  LMAO, this clown is acting like american food is real food.
  
  We can talk about how boring a soccer game
  The nation's "national passtime" is baseball lmao I don't think we have a leg to stand on there bud.
  Anyone else enjoy having a complete global dominance on movies, tv, and pop culture?
  Also you seem to be saying this as though it's a good thing...
  
  Found the American
  
  You’d never hear any Americans talking about soccer unless their kids were playing in a Rec league
  
  Careful not to burn yourself at that BBQ 'cos you'll have to go into debt to afford a sticking plaster. That is if any gathering of Americans larger than two doesn't just immediately devolve into a mass shooting again. Maybe you'll see a weather balloon and have to hide indoors from the Chinese.
  
  Americans showing the world again and again that they are completely incapable of comedy.

Americans always regurgite the "Fahrenheit is how people feel" nonsense, but it is just that: nonsense. Americans are familiar with fahrenheit so they think that it is more inituitive than other systems, but unsurprisingly people who are used to celsius have no problems using it to measure "how people feel" and will think it is a very inituitive system.
- Can confirm. Moved from the US to Canada and maybe a year of using Celcius revealed to me just how fucking stupid and convoluted Fahrenheit is. My dad spent three weeks out here and started using Celcius on his phone. Now I only use Fahrenheit when dealing with fevers or temping cases of suspiciously overripe produce.
  Fellow Americans. Celcius is superior and more intuitive for those who take a moment to adjust to it. It is okay to accept this as fact without developing an inferiority complex. USA not always #1. USA quite often not #1 and that is okay. It is okay for USA to not be #1 without developing an inferiority complex.
  
  Fahrenheit is European.
  
  Fahrenheit has a fine granularity that is lost in cold climates. It’s why the Bahamas/Belize use it as well.
- Both are equally arbitrary. You just have to know a handful of temperatures that you use in your day to day life either way.
  
  Celsius being based on water makes it the most intuitive of the three imo.
- Celsius is more intuitive for like science or lab work but for day to day use either one is really arbitrary based on what you're used to.
- I mean, you're 100% wrong. Fahrenheit isn't "how people feel" arbitrarily, it's almost literally a 0-100 scale of how hot it is outside. You need no prior knowledge to interpret a Fahrenheit measurement. Which really reflects poorly on everyone who says "Fahrenheit doesn't make any sense" because if they were capable of any thought at all they would figure it out in 2 seconds, like everyone else. I'm a lab rat that uses Celsius all day every day, I'm just not a pretentious stuck up tool about alternate measurements just because I refuse to understand them.
- I like that Fahrenheit has a narrower range for degrees. 1C is 1.8 degrees F. So, F allows you to have more precision without the use of decimals. Like, 71F feels noticeably different to me than 64F, but that is only a 3.8 degree difference in C.
  
  But that also doesn't matter because the granularity is meaningless if you don't make decisions for differences between 71F and 70F
  
  3 degrees celcius is easily noticeable too so that's a bit of a moot point. If anything, 1 degree celcius is much harder to discern and therefore having an even more granular scale is unnecessary.
- It is really easy to map onto human feel though. 0-100 pretty accurately maps onto our minimum and maximum realistically survivable temps, long-term, and the middle temperatures of those are the most comfortable. It's far more round, when it comes to describing human preference and survivability, than Celsius is.
  
  I bet a lot more people know what 0°C feels like than 0°F. One is freezing point, one is a completely arbitrary temperature which only gets called "the lowest you'll experience" as a post hoc rationalisation of Fahrenheit. Most people will never experience anything that cold, some people experience colder.
  I even bet more people know what 100°C feels like than 100°F. One is accidentally getting scalded by boiling water, the other is a completely arbitrary temperature which is quite hot but not even the hottest you'll experience in America.
  
  I wanna say that with this logic 50 should be right around the most comfortable temp.. But for most people it's closer to 70.
  I'll try to explain how easily mappable Celsius is to people as well.
  -40 to +40.. -40 being extremely cold, and +40 being extremely hot. 21c is the equivalent of 70f.
  It's all the same stuff. Just matters what you're used to.
  
  No it doesn't, unfortunately.
  What makes 0F (-18C) special? How do you estimate survivability at such temperature? If I'd be out on the street naked, I would die there in a matter of minutes. At the same time, there is plenty of places where winter temperatures go -40F (-40C) and even below, yet people very much survive and live there.
  Similar with 100F (38C). There are places with higher temps in the summer, up to 120F (49C) in some places, yet people survive. Still, if you're not equipped with anything, 100F (38C) will burn you alive.
  All that not to mention that 50F (10C) is actually cold, not comfortable.
  Fahrenheit is only intuitive and "feeling-descriptive" because you're used to it. From a person born in Celsius country, it's really not less intuitive. I know I can be comfortable in my birthday suit at around 25C. Less than 20 is chilly, less than 10 - cold, less than 0 - freezing. More than 30 is hot, more than 40 is deadly.
  
  Good luck surviving in 0°F long term.

Nah, it doesn't make any sense, and isn't deep or insightful at all.
- What’s the flaw??
  
  "Fahrenheit is how people feel" only makes sense if said people have never used another scale. You know how 100F "feels" because that's what you use. If you used Celsius you'd know how that scale feels instead, and be used to using the more useful scale generally.
  See also: people who think they don't have an accent.
  
  Celcius is how I "feel", because that's the scale I've learned and can relate to.
  Farenheit is what you "feel" for the same reason.
  It's not because one is intrinsically better linked to our bodies.
  
  "Kilometres is how cars drive. Feet is how people run"
  This has the same level of nuance and thought behind it. It's just stupid.
  
  It only works if you grew up in a country that uses Fahrenheit. I didn't, so to me Celsius is how I feel. I've no idea whether 20 f is jeans and a t-shirt weather, or if I should be getting my coat. 20 c however I know that as long as it's not windy I'll be good with jeans and a t-shirt, but that it's still a little too cool to get out my shorts.
  
  America maybe?
  
  You mean other than the fact only a tiny proportion of people in the world use Fahrenheit?
- Try having fun every once in a while
  
  If your version of "fun" is repeatedly showing everyone the stupid thing you posted last time you were stoned out of your mind and telling them it's a great mnemonic or mantra, then I'mma have to ask for us to not be friends.
- Well, aren't you a fun one?
- Let me explain. Anything below 0F is really cold for a human, and anything above 100F is really hot. The Fahrenheit scale was built around human biology.
  0C isn't even that cold, and 100C is literally instant death. Thus, Celsius is less applicable to the human experience and more applicable to the physical properties of water. The typical range of human scale temperatures is like -10 to 40 degrees on the Celsius scale? Makes no sense.
  Kelvin is the most scientifically objective scale, but also the least intuitive for humans, because absolute zero is completely outside our frame of reference.
  So it's easily demonstrable that Fahrenheit is how people feel, Celsius is how water feels, and Kelvin is how molecules feel.
  Be forewarned that I am willing to die on this hill, and any challenges to my position will result in increasingly large walls of text until you have conceded the point 😤
  
  Final edit: Well, I got what I asked for. I think I ended up making some pretty irrefutable points with these two last ones though. Once again, math saves the day. If somebody wants to continue the discussion make another thread and tag me because this is a bit much for science memes.
  
  100C is literally instant death.
  Laughs in Finnish (while sipping beer in a 100C Sauna)
  
  The Fahrenheit scale was built around human biology.
  Nope, it was built around the highest and lowest extremes some dude could create in his room. Not based on human biology in the slightest. Don't repeat this false information.
  0C isn’t even that cold, and 100C is literally instant death.
  Yeah, but counter argument, who gives a shit? The "meme" doesn't say anything remotely close to "from 0 to 100". I don't know why you are under the impression that these scales become inaccurate if you leave the 0-100 range. I live in a region that frequents -40C to +40C over a year- that's centered on zero, so it's already better for "how humans feel" than being centered on 32 and pretending there is some cosmic/celestial/god ordained reason for it.
  Kelvin is the most scientifically objective scale, but also the least intuitive for humans...
  Still no one giving a shit- the "meme" doesn't remotely even suggest anything related to this.
  Be forewarned that I am willing to die on this hill
  I don't know why you sign this off with "I'm an obnoxious twat", but I'm perfectly happy with using the block function if the threat is real.
  
  The typical range of human scale temperatures is like -10 to 40 degrees on the Celsius scale? Makes no sense.
  But it makes so much sense though. Because it's anchored around the freezing and boiling points of water, which is a universal experience we can all relate to. 0°C outside? It's freezing.
  Fahrenheit as "the human scale" is what makes no fucking sense. You end up with the same exact problem where your specific range of "human scale temperatures" does not line up with 0-100°F at all. But it's also not anchored to water's behavior. So it just ends up being arbitrary.
  
  I grew up with celcius and to me it feels more applicable to the human experience. It literally only depends on which one you're more used to, idk why people feel the need to come up with these weird unnecessary "explanations".
  
  Anything below 0F is really cold for a human
  Anything below 10F is really cold for a human too, and so is anything below -10F what's your point?
  100C is literally instant death.
  While commonly between 80 and 100, finnish sauna temperatures up to 110°c are not unheard of.
  Very hot, but definitely not even close to instant death.
  
  Anything below 0F is really cold for a human, and anything above 100F is really hot.
  Therefore the perfect temperature would be 50°F, which is 10°C, in my opinion a little too cold to be perfect, I'd prefer something in the 15-20°C range.
  
  Whenever I think that I have seen it all in one of these °F vs °C threads, someone comes along and proves me wrong.
  No, the F scale was not built around human biology, that is pure conjecture from people who can't let go of their antiquated system of measures.
  But you go die on that hill, I won't stop you.
  
  I would not mind if you were to expand
  
  'murican being 'murican. That's why nobody likes you people.
  Kelvin is the most scientifically objective scale, but also the least intuitive for humans, because absolute zero is completely outside our frame of reference.
  Celsius is literally Kelvin + 273.
  
  -10C or 10C: Pretty comfortable
  -20C or 20C: Starting to feel bit cold or hot
  -30C or 30C: Uncomfortably cold or hot
  -40C or 40C: Almost painfully cold or hot
  How exactly is -40F to 104F better than that for human purposes?
  
  That is a large amount of text to say "I am used to fahrenheit therefore it makes sense to me, and now I will proceed to claim it is the only system that shows how humans feel".
  
  I like watching people dying in this hill, more power to you. I don't necessarily agree, but telling people it's negative anything just to say it's pretty cold is indeed less intuitive to me (and kids don't even know negatives until a bit older).
  Only thing is, 100 doesn't need to be anyone's scale, with C I think of it more like a scale from 10 to 40, especially since I live in California, and F is more a scale from 50 to 110. It'd probably help if F really was based on human temps, with 100 being the average temp whenever you measure, instead of 96 to 98.
  (An aside, neither are ratio scales. 0 in both cases are arbitrary and a temp of 100 isn't twice as hot as 50. Only Kelvin is like that, which makes it my favorite even if it's never intuitive, haha)
  
  Looks like you made the mistake of posting this when the European downvote gang was awake.

Kelvin is for scientists.
Celsius is for people.
Fahrenheit is a translation layer between Celsius and Americans. All their weather stations have been Celsius for ages, it's a societal decision to use an arbitrary unit instead. The "69F censoring" which turned out to be a rounding artefact illustrated that nicely. Their government could change that, power to them that they decide not to 🤷‍♂️
- fahrenheit is literally defined by celsius at this point, afaik celsius is literally the official standard of the united states but everyone just.. keeps using fahrenheit anyways
  
  There's also no such thing as an inch. It's defined by the meter, there isn't an official yardstick.
  The only reason the UK, Canada and USA used the same inch is because they needed to interchange parts for weapons and machines during WW1. Despite all thinking they used the same measurement system the definition had drifted between them. Metric was defined by enlightenment people with better methods of reproducing the standard. So it was easier to adopt a inch definition based on 25.4mm.
  The UK and US inch only match because of WW1. The imperial volumes are still different.

Fuck Fahrenheit.
- All my homies hate fahrenheit.

Honestly? I’ve only lived in countries with Celsius and Celsius is how I feel. I know exactly how hot or cold a day is gonna be if I look up the temperature. Thats how I know what clothes to wear!!! But Fahrenheit confuses the shit out of me. Every time I visit the US, I always convert the temp back to Celsius when someone tells me the temp.

I know Fahrenheit has more degrees and that can give you more datapoints. But cmon. The temp only goes up to, like, 50 C anyways lol. How many degrees do you need 🤣. Can you really differentiate between 61 and 62 F? Now, 60 to 65 F might be believable, but that’s like 15 to 18 C so, that much difference is shown even in Celsius.

I’m not saying Celsius is better, or that Americans should convert to it. Actually, if I was God-Emperor, I’d force us all to use Kelvin,, given it begins with Absolute Zero and I’m a sucker for shit like that.

But variety is the spice of life. For Americans, Fahrenheit is how they feel. For most of the rest of us, it’s Celsius.

I know Fahrenheit has more degrees and that can give you more datapoints.
How do decimal places work?
I’m not saying Celsius is better, or that Americans should convert to it.
I am. But first, metric mass, volume, and distance.
Signed,
An American (who doesn't like fractions)
It's more about the number range in ordinary use than the granularity.
Ordinary daily temperatures in F run from about 0-100. Numbers outside of this range are extreme weather.
- Numbers outside of this range are extreme weather.
  Hot Weather: This argument might have been valid like a century ago but it clearly hasn’t been valid for billions of people around the world (including parts of the US) that regularly sees temperature crossing 38 C (100 F) in the summer. This includes Middle East, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and I’m sure more places too.
  Like, it’s not extreme if it’s expected every year. And I’m not taking 39 C. Where I lived, it reached 49 C (120 F) every single summer. That is summer.
  Cold Weather: And this is also true for so many people around the world who live in places where temperature, every winter, goes below -18 C (0 F). Like, that’s not a billion people, but that’s still in the millions (Canada, Russia, Scandinavia etc.) We’d have to use the - sign every winter no matter which system we use, Celsius or Fahrenheit. Just like the billion+ people I talked about above.
  People used to the Celsius system, especially those living in areas where it frequently goes below freezing, are well versed with the - symbol. We know the difference between -5 and -10 like we know between 0 and 5.
  Again, Americans can keep their F and their LBs and their Miles and their every other unique charm. But it’s also funny when they try to prove that it’s somehow better or more natural. Like, it’s natural and rational to you.
- Are people even capable of accurately perceiving a difference of 1 or 2 degrees in either system? I'm putting on a jacket if it's 9 or 7 celcius outside anyway. Struggling to think of any human day to day situations where a difference of a degree or two changes the way most people act or feel.
  If you need granularity, you can still get infinite granularity with decimals in either system.
- Boiling water feels really fucking hot which is why Celsius makes more sense
- 0 fahrenheit is pretty much random when it comes to ordinary life. Well it's pretty random when it comes to anything.
As an American, I wish I could learn Celsius
- It's good to know how your gpu feels
- you know how cold ice is, right? and you know how hot boiling water is.
  Just interpolate between them. For some extra assistence, you get burns when in extended contact with something at 40°C, 20°C is a cool summer day, and the standard oven temperature is 200°C.
- C = (°F-32)/1.8

This came up a week ago. I made a chart:

Temps	easily relatable conditions
<0	throw boiling water up in the air to make it snow
0-10	dangerous freezing cold
10-20	bitter freezing cold
20-30	freezing cold
30-40	coat cold
50-60	jacket cool
60-70	cool
70-80	pleasant
80-90	warm
90-100	hot
100-110	too damn hot for my fat ass/fry an egg outside

One of the conclusions on why I like Fahrenheit over Celsius for weather is it's ironically the most base 10 like for a non-SI scale. A phrase like "it's going to be in the 70s today" has so much information in it. Usually with no weather changes like a front coming in, you'll know that during the day it'll be pleasant. At night the temperature range will drop by around 10 degrees and you'll know you'll likely need a light jacket or at least long sleeves to stay comfortable.

If metric wanted to adopt a scale with more graduations that could be easily grouped to 10s, that'd be great. I don't know why 0-100 was arbitrarily chosen to be the scale for water instead of 0-1000.

For temp measurements outside of weather I really do prefer Celsius though.

As someone who grew up in the tropics and now lives somewhere colder, I went through the first three table entries thinking that this was Celsius and felt understood.
Ok but having not grown up with F I feel the same way about -20 to 40 °C, which you can divide into 5° bands with almost identical names.
but like we do the exact same thing with celsius, if you say "it's gonna be about 15°C today then i know what to wear.
people don't stand there doing maths to figure out what to wear, they intuitively learn what clothes go with what number.

Reading these comments, my spiteful genie wish is to invent and proliferate a log base 10 scale, something like earthquake magnitudes or decibels. Y'all hate F or C? Welcome T, where 1 equals 1 Kelvin, 2 equals 10 Kelvin, 3 equals 100 Kelvin, 4 equals 1000 Kelvin, and so on.
It's easy! Humans live somewhere around 3, as does boiling and freezing, while the sun is between a 4 and a 5 at the surface and the core is closer to an 8.
- Make it log, but not start at absolute zero anyway
  
  Yessss .. something positively baffling, like the body temperature of my cousin's guinea pig when experiencing a slight fever.
  
  No, please start at absolute zero, then you get negative infinity.
- Take a look at the mean molecular kinetic energy.
  As a bonus, it's measured in Joules. Or eV if you want a sensible unity, but I don't think you'll want it.

With Celsius it's all nice and round numbers unlike the mess called fahrenheit:
0°C—black ice, snow, be careful on the road and you probably want to wear gloves and a hat
0...10°C—a bit chilly, but you can leave your hat home
10...20°C—pleasant, but not quite tee-and-shorts yet
20...30°C—nice summer weather
30...40°C—holy crap it's hot!
40...50°C—are you fucking kidding me?
50+°C—my proteins are starting to denature...
100°C—good sauna
110°C—finns think it's a good sauna
120+°C—finns think it's getting a bit too hot in the sauna. Italians tend to vaporize in sauna (speaking from experience)
...
0...-10°C—a pleasant winter weather
10...-20°C—getting a bit frosty
20...-30°C—finns think it's a pleasant winter weather
40°C—vodka freezes. Russians and finns agree it's getting a bit frosty
50°C—getting a little hard to start your Uazik in the morning in Siberia due to engine oil solidifying
60°C—researchers in Antarctica all agree it's getting a bit frosty and someone should close the window
- -60c - Canadians consider putting on a hoodie
- To be honest, a 10°C range is way too much variation for me to consider it as the same 'category' (at least in the 0°C ~ 40°C range). I say that as a Brazilian.
  
  Yeah, most people in Brazil do not think 20 is pleasant at all
  
  0-5 and 5-10 is more like it
  
  See that's my issue with degrees C. It's not as fine a measurement as degrees F. A difference of 5F is not terribly much, but it is noticeable. A difference of 5C is substantial (to me) and would make me very uncomfortable. So with F, I can know with more precision how uncomfortable I should expect to be :)

If fahrenheit was how people felt, then room temperature would be 0 because that's the ideal temperature. Negative fahrenheit would be too cold, positive to warm.
- I would like to use this system you propose. 0 is room temperature, plus/minus 100 is death by freezing or heatstroke... But we probably have to do some work to make units fit in a linear way. Are you filing the patent or am I?
  
  I was in a sauna at +95 Celsius for several minutes the other day. And within the same week I felt -35 Celsius cold on my bare skin.
  Both could kill me provided a bit more exposure, but they don't instantly. Meanwhile, +4 Celsius can also cause death by hypothermia pretty easily in the right circumstances.
  So, while I like the idea, I think implementation will be hard as there is no clear death number on either end of the spectrum. Not to mention humidity, clothing, exertion, level of hydration, etc...
- That isn't consistent with K and C though. -K doesn't exist. And water doesn't become more frozen at -C (well I guess it technically becomes different kinds of frozen).
  Zero in that sense represents the absolute limit that one could exist in a particular state, which for F would be comfort? I guess the issue with humans is that 0 would be very subjective. But I think for almost all humans, the limit would be closer to 40F than 0F.
  
  -K doesn't exist.
  It does though, but negative Kelvin is actually hotter than any positive Kelvin.
- 100 is hot out and 0 is cold. That's not crazy. 35 being hot out is pretty arbitrary for day to day use. But if your job is boiling water every day, it's probably not the best.
  
  The freezing point of water seems a hell of a lot more relevant to what humans consider 'cold'...which is why it's the zero. The boiling point of water isn't the zero in Celsius after all.
  Also 'cold' as a concept is often represented with symbols related to frozen water such as snow flakes and icicles.

Celsius can be used in place of all three, the others cannot.
The freezing point of water is also a great place to zero the scale.
- i love this idea that water is completely irrelevant to humans, as if it's not like 60% of our mass and vital to living
  yeah no let's base the temperature scale around what some english dude felt was comfortable
  
  Yeah, like who needs to tell quickly whether road conditions will be icy? It's much more useful to know how much warmer it is than the arbitrary temperature Americans say is the lowest you can survive
- I could be wrong on this, but I think Kelvin is basically required for thermodynamic measurements. Entropy measurements, for example, depend on ratios between temperatures relative to absolute zero. You could still manage using centigrade of course, but you would have to offset all of your temperature measurements by 273.15
  Probably a lot of other physical applications that also depend on having an absolute zero reference, but that's the only one I can think of for now.
- The freezing point of water is also a great place to zero the scale
  I disagree. Realistically the scale shouldn't be able to be negative at all. It doesn't really make any sense for something have a negative temperature.
  Imagine if other scales worked that way. An object can't be negative centimeters long. Light can't be negative lumens. You can't score negative % on a test. If you are measuring something you can't have less than nothing.
  
  It's not nothing, it's just below the freezing point of water. Zero energy is zero Kelvin. This is also a bad take because Fahrenheit also goes negative. I suppose you should just start using Kelvin if that is your opinion.
- Plus 100 is boiling it's a perfect scale.

Yeah, the reason you can't stop thinking about it is because it makes no sense but you insist it does so your brain can't stop processing it, trying to figure it out, but every answer you come up with is crap and you know it. It's called cognitive dissonance, you're really not supposed to lean into it.
- It makes no sense but it's my reality. o7
  
  ... you think that's your reality? an emo bullshit post like this is your reality? then truly I do salute you, fellow retard

Fahrenheit isn't how people feel, it's how brine solutions feel.
- Which is a surprisingly good approximation for how people feel. 0-100 is pretty survivable, with the mid ranges being most comfortable, and things outside of that range starting to pose serious threats.
  
  0-100 is pretty survivable
  I can tell you've never been outside when it was 0°F
  
  50F (or 40-60F) is not the most comfortable for...well, anyone i think. Thats pretty chilly for most people, with 60F being the low side of comfortable (both inside and outside). Most universally comfortable temperature range is probably around 70-80F, which is not really "around the middle" in that 0-100 range. 70F is ideal inside temperature, 80F is a nice warm summer day outside.

But it doesn't really make sense, it's just some nonsense that sounds clever

Converting from Fahrenheit to Celsius is quite easy. All you need to do is:

 undefined

    
import math
import random
import time

def obtain_temperature_scale():
    temperature_scales = ["Fahrenheit", "Celsius", "Kelvin", "Rankine", "Réaumur", "Newton", "Delisle", "Rømer"]
    return random.choice(temperature_scales)

def create_cryptic_prompts():
    cryptic_prompts = [
        "Unveil the hidden truth within the scorching embers.",
        "Decode the whispers of the arctic winds.",
        "Unravel the enigma of thermal equilibrium.",
        "Unlock the secrets of the thermometric realm."
    ]
    return random.choice(cryptic_prompts)

def await_user_input(prompt):
    print(prompt)
    return float(input("Enter the temperature value: "))

def dramatic_pause():
    print("Calculating...")
    time.sleep(random.uniform(1.5, 3.5))

def convert_to_celsius(fahrenheit):
    return (fahrenheit - 32) * (5/9)

def main():
    temperature_scale = obtain_temperature_scale()
    if temperature_scale == "Fahrenheit":
        cryptic_prompt = create_cryptic_prompts()
        fahrenheit_temp = await_user_input(cryptic_prompt)
        dramatic_pause()
        celsius_temp = convert_to_celsius(fahrenheit_temp)
        print(f"The temperature in Celsius is: {celsius_temp:.2f}°C")
    else:
        print("This program only accepts Fahrenheit temperatures.")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

def dramatic_pause():
Those cryptic prompts go pretty hard.
- Are you on your phone? On desktop it shows the Python code. Memmy doesn't show it. I'm guessing that's probably why it's so cryptic.

How very American.
I suppose it is how people feel, just, y'know, the roughly 4-5% of people who happen to already use that temperature scale. Shocker, that.
- I think if Fahrenheit as percent hot. 0F is zero percent hot, 100F is 100 percent hot. Most people are comfortable with the weather between 60-80 percent hot.
  
  I see a lot of people that say Fahrenheit makes sense if you think about it as a percentage, but i have no idea what "60% hot" means
- I think the focus of this is just where the origins of the units are derived. Fahrenheit was invented at a hospital for identifying patients outside of the normal range, Celsius was invented based on the liquid range of water, and Kelvin was invented based on when matter stops
  
  Fahrenheit was invented at a hospital for identifying patients outside of the normal range...
  0°F is outside the normal human temperature range? No shit!
  You're talking a bunch of bullcrap! Fahrenheit was developed by a German Scientist and he just chose two measurements that were halfway decent to reproduce. That's all there is to it. Got nothing to do with hospitals.
  
  The focus of it is what you are used to.
  All scales are basically created equal - they must be, since they measure the same thing and scale the same way. (No pun intended.)
  The only difference there can ever be between C/K/F (or R for that matter) is multiplying by one constant and/or adding another.
  Yanks use Fahrenheit, grow up with it, and see it used every day. Therefore it is intuitive and logical. To them.
  The vast majority of people on Earth - about 95% - actually don't, so it isn't.
  That makes the phrasing and underlying assumption pretty characteristically American, and tempting to poke some gentle fun at.
  
  Except it was calibrated on someone who was running a fever, so it fails at even that.

Most people are inherently biased towards their chosen system. A "water scale" doesn't make sense to fahrenheit users, and a "human scale" is dismissed as even existing by the Celsius users. But hey, if you want to fight, have at it. It's annoying and pointless, but that's what the internet is for.
- “human scale” is dismissed as even existing by the Celsius users
  Celsius user here.
  I find "I'm more used to it, therefore it makes more intuitive sense to me" is a perfectly understandable argument.
  The problem with the human scale argument is that it makes it sound completely arbitrary.
  To a human there is no objective difference between -1F, 0F or +1F. They are all about the same degree of "cold".
  
  i mean a lot of measurements are arbitrary necause their manmade. thats creation of measurements in a nutshell. they exist to give people context to conpare to. time is a manmade construct, unit of length is a manmade construct. unit of weight is a manmade construct.
  for instance with 1 kilo, tell me the last time a regular person had platinum-iridium ingot. its completely arbitrary.
  
  Is there a difference between 19, 20, and 21 Celsius? It's also pretty subtle. Yes, there's a bigger difference than fahrenheit, but I've never cared regardless of scale down to what degree the temperature is. As a fahrenheit user, it's always 10s. 0-10, 10-20, etc.
  
  Also when they describe their fahrenheit human scale it is "0 is really cold" and "100 is really hot", which are subjective and not very informative gauges of anything.
- Did it never occur to you that Celsius is basically Kelvin with the zero point moved to human reference?
  Human reference because >50% of our body is water. We are essentially water bags.
  
  This is interesting but not really justified historically. Celsius predates the concept of absolute zero, and water is very important to our world, not just ourselves.
- I'm honestly just so tired. Could I snap my fingers and have the US switch to metric units with everyone understanding them as intuitively as the units they grew up with, I would. I really don't have an emotional attachment to what letter appears next to the temperature.
  We couldn't even stick the the unanimously popular bill to abolish DST. This issue is so much further down the list of priorities and yet so much more expensive to change that I don't expect it to come up during my lifetime. To spend the next few decades arguing about it without any hope of a meaningful resolution sounds like my personal hell.
- how do you calibrate a fahrenheit thermometer? With celsius it's hilariously trivial, if the thermometer says it's about 0 when you see water freeze, it's correct enough for everyday use.
  
  I mean you can do the same with a Fahrenheit thermometer, just check that it reaches 32. Most anyone used to that scale knows 32 is the magic number.
  
  how do you calibrate a fahrenheit thermometer? With celsius it's hilariously trivial, if the thermometer says it's about 0 when you see water freeze, it's correct enough for everyday use.
  You do the exact same but use 32 degrees instead of zero. I know celsius is cool and good but most people seem incapable of understanding how its just fucking marks on a line and any non-sciencey advantage is pretty much null.
  
  You put a normal Celsius thermometer next to it and apply maths.

Most heated post on Lemmy
- hot take, right there.
  
  I think it's 0K

The thing about Fahrenheit is kinda wrong. 0 is when salt water freezes, and 100 was supposedly measured by a woman's body temperature when she was sick.

How can you manage to spell Fahrenheit right but Celsius wrong?
- USA

Nah. Only 50F to 115f is usable. What kind of weird ass datapoints are those? I mean 10C to 45C are just as random, but at least it aligns with something practical. At least I understand that 200C is twice what it takes to boil water. I have no idea how hot 400F is supposed to be.
- "Twice what it takes to boil water" doesn't make any sense.

Except it makes literally no sense whatsoever...

Who uses Fahrenheit in a first world country?
- America bad!!
  
  How'd you know?
  
  I don't live there, so ill take your word for it.

Fahrenheit is the temperature brine feels.

There is absolutely no reason for Fahrenheit. It made sense before there was Celsius, but it doesn't make sense today.
- It's better for weather and human reference. Fuck off with this tired rhetoric.
  
  I'm curious, why do you think Farenheit is better for weather and human reference?

Wait, what's the culture war deal with this marde?
For me, fahrenheit is fine (just remember 100 c to 212 f, --> with 5/9 or 9/5 +/-32 calculation)
but I prefer for simplicity, celcius, if not kelvin....
, it do be like this, 1 world, 2 systems
It's like always the same map around here, ykwim...

"Human scale". Snort. What bollocks.
- I hate human scales. Last few times I stood on one it told me I was too heavy for my liking.

What is rankine?
- It's how molecular people feel
- An abomination

At this point, there’s no harm in using Fahrenheit. We can convert it to celcius. But please use a sane date format.

I don't get it...people freeze at 0F and boil at 100F?
- No, but those describe pretty well the range within people tend to do okay in. Anything lower or higher and you tend to need more specialized gear and have to seriously limit exposure.
  
  You need specialized gear at less than 0F and more than 100F? So totally fine to wear t-shirt and shorts anywhere in between? Just face facts...F is a completely nonsensical system with no basis in any reality.

Celcius doesn't care about your feelings

No, your just used to Fahrenheit.

Forget rage bait, we're into straight up "gr 7 science" bait territory now.

What you grew up with makes sense to you. Shock!

Fuck Fahrenheit.

These comments are toxic as fuck.
- Only if you are from the US. Everyone else is just nodding, thinking about time someone said that, and moving on
- Yeah people are being weirdly condescending and smarmy in here.

That makes as much sense as shutting on the lights

It's just a scale, you get used to it. Human bodies are 60% water

"Celcius"...

So fahrenheit is The Incredibles, celsius is Elemental, and kelvin is an upcoming Pixar movie?
- Home Alone 7

"On a scale of -20 ➡️ 40, how hot are you?" Isn't that hard to comprehend

Too bad that people are 80% water and water is a molecule

Yeah that's all very cool but Celsius means that the temperature display on my kettle reaches 100 once the water is boiling. That's a round number. Checkmate, atheists.

419 comments