this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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Science Memes

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submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 117 points 1 year ago (88 children)

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.

[–] Donkter 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Phrodo_00 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] grandkaiser 1 points 1 year ago

90 f was the average temperature of the human body. 0 in fahrenheit used to be the eutectic point of water and ammonium chloride. Eventually though, the scale was adjusted so that the lower point was the freezing temperature of water (32 degrees) and the upper point was the boiling point of water (212 degrees) this was chosen so that there would be a highly divisible number between them (180) due to this adjustment, 0 isn't special in fahrenheit, and neither is 90.

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