this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
1932 points (93.9% liked)
Memes
45317 readers
2217 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Because precision has nothing to do with it and it's all about being easy to convert between different units and having sensible zero and 100-points for temperature?
Why write 36.111 C when you could write 97 F? Its the same reason you write 3cm instead of 0.03m. Its just more convenient even though its the same thing.
Why write 96.8 F when you could write 36 C? Do you honestly believe that we're thinking about temperatures in Fahrenheit and then just converting to Celsius when we write them down?
In fairness to Fahrenheit, you can round it to a whole number with a lesser difference in feel. That's more for feel though, for measurements of temp in cooking or chemistry, Celsius is useful due to boiling point.
Agreed, though if you are measuring it via instrument then what difference does it make how "round" the number is?
I was more thinking of when you're telling your friend what the temperature is outside, or scenarios similar to that. It's not useful in most other applications.
What difference does it make if the temperature is 79 or 80 F? That's a difference of about half a Celsius, and as a Celsius user, I can tell you that I don't plan my daily life based on a half a degree difference, or even a one degree difference; 5 degree precision is almost always enough.