this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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Science Memes

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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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

[–] Theharpyeagle 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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).

[–] Pok 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well if you're going to bring precautions into it, we may as well say the upper and lower bounds should include things like 'feels hot even with air conditioning on' or 'survivable with a heated jacket and boots'.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Sure, that's a great scale if the goal of it is "What should I wear for the climate" and could be fully functional to that purpose with hundreds of degrees of the scale.

What we base scales on are entirely arbitrary and meant to be there for a purpose. If that purpose is clothing than it's succeeding at it's job.

The Fahrenheit scale is just based on a person saying that's what they felt like was absolutely cold and what was hot based on personal feelings and marking thermometers which ones on the market often didn't even match each other. It was for the people as an emotional barometer to the temp. Celsius is definitely a scientist one which picked a standard but why water? They could have picked so many elements or compounds but had to specify what ocean's water because they aren't all equal. It's all arbitrary. Dance in the nonsense.

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