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.
1
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
They’re right though, soccer is boring
The most watched sport in the world is boring? Most of the world beg to differ…
Well good thing I don’t care what they think
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.
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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.
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 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.
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.
What? People experience 100 f regularly. It’s literally their body temperature.
boiling water isnt necessarily 100c. if youre boiling water, it can be any arbitrary temperature above 100.
thats like going to a geyser pit and saying thats 100c, when it isnt. when you cook and let water come to a boil, the chef doesnt care that its exactly 100c, only that its in the state above 100.
If anything it’ll be below 100 due to altitude. For example salt water for making pasta boils still at approx 100 deg. C. It takes quite a lot of salt (way more than you would ever want to consume) to meaningfully raise the boiling point.
if youre boiling water, it can be any arbitrary temperature above 100.
That’s not how boiling works. The water heats up to its boiling point where it stops and boils. While boiling the temperature does not increase, it stays exactly at the boiling point. This is called “Latent Heat”, at its boiling point water will absorb heat without increasing in temperature until it has absorbed enough for its phase to change.
There is an exception to this called superheating
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.
0-150 is the better range, and 75 is right in the middle. 100 is just a hot air temperature most people don’t want to be in but it’s not an extreme.
Saunas can get up to 200 degrees
Hot tubs are usually at 100
Freezers need to be at least 0
You say 15°C. 6° cooler than room temperature. But how much is 6°?
It’s 60°F.
50°F or 10°C is where you need clothes to survive
300, 325, 350 is where you bake cookies (149-176°C)
Fahrenheit has a bunch of 5 and 10s
Saying something like high 70s or low 70s for temp represents an easy way to tell temperature.
21° to 26° for celcius
I walk outside and say “It feels like high 70s today” someone using celcius would say, “Feels like 25°”. If it was a little warmer than “low 80s” compared to “Ehh about 26 or 27°C”
Why is it okay to say high 70s/low 80s and not high 20s? No one goes outside and says, “Ehh, it feels like 26.6 oC today.”, we just know it is a bit warmer than 25.
Yeah, I get your point. I think I’m just trying to explain that it all just matters where you grew up and what you used. I go outside today and I do say it feels like a 12 degree day. It’s not that much different.
I must admit, the oven temps are nice, but they are a product of being written in Fahrenheit (if they were written in celcius, it would be round too, like 150c, 160c, 170c, 175c, etc)
But the more I look at it the more I see it’s all just numbers. We put importance to these numbers but they’re all pretty arbitrary, except celcius using 0 as the freezing point for water and 100 as the boiling point- these are two very important measures that are just weird for Fahrenheit.
When do you use 0° and 100°C?
This is also at standard pressure and most do not live at sea level.
I don’t put a thermometer in my water to make sure it is boiling or one in my water to make sure it freezes.
It can snow and roads can ice before it hits 0°C
It has no real world applications
I thought we left pedants with reddit.
Take care.
0-150 is the better range
Depends on where you live. Someone in Siberia would probably disagree, as the temperature there can reach -40
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.
0F is the temperature a freezer needs to be to keep food fresh.
50F is the point that you can’t survive without clothes, your body will not generate enough heat.
100F (38C) will not burn you alive. You can survive for a long time in a sauna at 200F.
100F is perfect hot tub temperature
Freezer normally operates at -4F
You can’t survive without clothes at 55-60F, either.
100F will not burn you in an instant, but the comment went into long-term survival, and good luck surviving at that.
Not sure where you got -4F from.
USDA, United States Department of Agriculture, recommends 0°F or -17.8°C
100°F in the shade isn’t extreme, and you’d be able to survive normally (With more water, everyone can use more water)
100°F is hot tub water
120°F is recommended hot tap water
140°F water will pretty much burn you instantly
Guess what, Canada sets the freezer at -15 Celsius. The USDA just chose 0F because it’s good enough and a nice easy to remember number, there is nothing special about it.
Same with all your other numbers, your just using whatever the closest even F value is that’s easy to remember there’s nothing special about any of them and we have equivalents in Celsius
your freezer at -18 °C (0 °F) or lower. This will keep your food out of the temperature danger zone between 4 °C (40 °F) to 60 °C (140 °F) where bacteria can grow quickly.
According to Canada.ca
Every 2 F is basically 1 C. You have more whole numbers with F.
Like -15°C is 5°F
6°F is -14.4444°C
-14°C is 6.8°F
So 5, 6, and 7°F are about equal to -15, -14.5, and -14°C.
And it’s not just a random number. You know how much more energy would be used if everyone kept their freezer just a couple degrees colder? It’s the optimum recommended temperature.
The 120 and 140 don’t make that much sense unfortunately.
90-110 is hand washing temp. 100 average.
110 is hot
120 recommend max
130 very hot
140 very very hot
150 burns
If I said to you. Would you stick your hand in 50°C water for 100 dollars would you do it?
What about 60°C?
65°C?
I bet you don’t know what would happen if you stuck your hand in 65°C water without looking it up. There’s a huge jump from 60° to 65°C. 70°C will instantly scald you.
Someone out there is stupid enough to think. Water boils at 100°C, 65 should be perfectly fine. Even though water doesn’t boil until 212°, most people would be cautious of sticking their hand in 100°F+ water.
Yes if you think 40°C+ is hot then you can gather that 65°C would be hotter. But why compare to 40° when you can do 100°.
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.
You know what? I just enjoy being able to set a thermostat to a comfortable level by just using whole numbers instead of resorting do decimal places.
If half a degree Celsius makes the difference between being comfortable or uncomfortable for you, then you have bigger problems than being able to use whole numbers.
Spoken like a pleb that has no control over their life. No thermostat control.
The irony of someone not wanting to use decimal points for their temperature setting isn’t lost on me, when that same person has to resort to fractions to measure anything thinner than a door.
Europeans don’t have thermostats because they don’t have AC. You’re speaking elvish to them.
Edit: Relax Europeans, it’s a snarky comment
Fairly sure the thermostat in my European house is in fact a thermostat. AC may not be common in homes here but heating sure is and needs a thermostat.
If you don’t know what you’re talking about, then yes, you might as well speak Elvish.
Put a temperature logger next to your thermostat and you’ll see it fluctuates 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit between the on off cycles. But your thermostat will make a great job fooling you.
resorting to decimal places
Lmao I love Yanks, something cute about them
Notice how the tweet doesn’t say “all people”. Context is everywhere and everything.
Farenheit is how americans feel. Celsius is how normal people measure temperature. Better?
Notice how the tweet doesn’t say “American people”. Accuracy is everything.
I fall to context again. The person writing is white and clueless enough not to be specific. Clearly. American.
Anyways. We are splitting hair over a silly tweet here.
Apparently the brown Americans use Celsius.
100 f is pretty close to average body temperature.
So above 100 means your surroundings are hotter than your body is unless you have a fever.
I think that’s an okay land mark.
I have zero reference for how hot my body is because I don’t feel my ambient temperature.
What I do know is that I feel cold if it’s anything below 30, and I know other people feel hot if it’s above 20. So what people consider hot/cold must clearly be based on something more than the average body temperature
I’m not saying it’s perfect.
But 100 being body temp is a land mark, so it’s not 100% arbitrary.
And 0f is close to salted ice. good system, very human.
Today I learnt. So that makes a bit more sense. 100 standard body temperature, 0 your blood starts to freeze.
If your body drops to room temperature, you’re already likely dead. If it freezes afterwards is only useful information if you’re preserving meat.
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.
You’re missing the point. The scale is what matters, not your personal experience or unit preference. From 0-100 F is right about what a human could be expected to tolerate without much help. In C, that’s -18-38. That’s a much more limited range in terms of human tolerance, but it works great for water, which would be 0-100 C. The scale doesn’t translate as well to K, but it does end at 0, so there’s that.
Yet people live in negative farenheit conditions.
Try telling a northern siberian, who commonly see winter temperatures between -50 and -100 fahrenheit, that 0f is right about the limit for a human to tolerate…
Exactly: or take folks who live in the tropics (about 40% of the human population) where it feels cold below 60F.
You think those people go out without thick, warm clothes? I get you’re really committed to arguing for C against people not even arguing against it, but come on now. You know what I’m saying. It’s not a particularly difficult concept to grasp.
You wouldn’t tolerate 0 farenheit in the nude either.
You wouldn’t tolerate 10 farenheit for extended periods either.I know what you are saying and I disagree. I am not trying to say celsius is better than farenheit, I’m saying farenheit is not in any way intrinsically more human than celsius.
0 farenheit was chosen because that’s the temperature of salty ice, The lowest temperature they could easily achieve at the time, it has nothing to do with what humans can and can’t endure.
Whatever mate. I’m not here to argue you out of whatever tunnel your stuck in. Good luck with that.
From 0-100 F is right about what a human could be expected to tolerate without much help.
The fuck does this mean
Exactly. And you’re not even pointing out that the human frame of reference starts at -18 Celsius! So a significant portion of the time, you’re going to have to use negative numbers to describe the temperature.
Edit
To clarify, I am not arguing that Fahrenheit is a better scale in general. I’m simply saying that it’s human-centric. Celsius is perfectly usable for human purposes, and also much more useful than Fahrenheit for scientific purposes. I’m just explaining how the meme makes sense to me
the human frame of reference starts at -18 Celsius!
That makes no sense to me at all. what frame of reference? what happens at -18? Ive been out in temperatures both above and below that, yes its cold as fuck, but nothing special happens? If we move a bit further north here they’d call me a wuss, and tell me real cold starts at -30.
you’re going to have to use negative numbers to describe the temperature.
I find that really useful actually! Our world is made of water. In winter time here, temperatures above 0 means the snow will be soggy and wet, negative temperatures means it won’t.
if the temperature was above 0 but has now dipped into the negatives, beware of ice when walking or driving.
You can use all the arguments you want, the truth is either system is perfectly useful for human day-to-day use if you are used to it.
The best system, for you, will always be the one you grew up with
Don’t play dumb. We’re talking about the range of temperatures an average person experiences in their day-to-day lives.
In winter time here, temperatures above 0 means the snow will be soggy and wet, negative temperatures means it won’t.
This might blow your mind but you can do the same thing with Fahrenheit. Just look for the number 32 instead of 0.
You can use all the arguments you want, the truth is either system is perfectly useful for human day-to-day use if you are used to it.
The best system, for you, will always be the one you grew up with
I never said otherwise and I totally agree.
However they are different systems and they do have pros and cons. Fahrenheit is more suitable for daily life while Celsius is more suitable for science.
Sorry im clearly not your average person experiencing >38° on a regular basis. There are plenty of humans that exist in climates that fall entirely outside of what you Americans consider “normal”. Which is why “-18 - 38 is the ‘normal’ range for an average person” is such an American thing to say. You took your own climate and projected it across the world.
Personally I like to go with the system that makes the most sense for 70% of earth’s surface and 64% of a human body.
Just look for the number 32 instead of 0.
Now you are almost arguing against yourself, I can use the same argument about body temperature, just look for 37 instead of 100
However they are different systems and they do have pros and cons.
And this is a pro for me where I live.
I never said otherwise and I totally agree.
Fahrenheit is more suitable for daily life
These don’t square.
Celsius and farenheit is just as suitable for daily life. You learn your important reference points and go from there.
To be clear, I’m not saying people are wrong to use C. People can use any unit they want for all I care. I’m just clarifying the point of the main post.
Totally, same. This thread was started by OPs reply
Nah, it doesn’t make any sense, and isn’t deep or insightful at all.
That was what triggered my response, otherwise I probably woulda just upvoted and kept scrolling.
“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?
5-ish percent isn’t exactly tiny
It’s tiny enough to be an issue for the meme…
you know your feelings are in Fahrenheit, you’re not some metric machine
/s?
It didn’t say which people. Also, I’m from South East Asia and have used Fahrenheit my entire life as a means to measure body temperature using mercury thermometers during fever time. It’s so much easier to say whether a fever is above 100 or not and then how much above 100.
So people do feel in Fahrenheit. A fuck ton of them do.
Yes, I know the meme is about the weather but… take a chill pill and look at your prejudices.
take a chill pill
My guy, you asked what the flaw was…
It also closely matches the weather experience in many places. Where I live 0 F is about the coldest it ever gets and 100 F is about the hottest it ever gets. I know there are places that get a little hotter or colder, but we have humidity here which prevents it from getting hotter, and this region just doesn’t get colder. It’s a 0-100 scale of human experience.
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 😤
main arguments from below
Celsius is adequate because it’s based on water, and all life on earth is also based on water, so it’s not totally out of our wheelhouse. But for humans specifically I think Fahrenheit is the clear answer.
One point that many may overlook is that most of us here are relatively smart and educated. There are a good number of people on this planet who just aren’t very good with numbers. Obviously a genius could easily adapt their mind to Kelvin or whatever.
You have to use negative numbers more frequently with Celsius > Celsius has a less intuitive frame of reference
Each Celsius degree is nearly two Fahrenheit degrees > Celsius is less granular
The reason I argue the more granular Fahrenheit is more intuitive is because a one degree change should intuitively be quite minor. But since you only have like 40 or 50 degrees to describe the entire gamut of human experiences with Celsius, it blends together a bit too much. I know that people will say to use decimals, but its the same flaw as negative numbers. It’s simply unintuitive and cumbersome.
B) 66F is room temperature. Halfway between freezing (32F) and 100F.
the intuition is learned and not natural.
All scales have to be learned, obviously. It’s far easier to create intuitive anchorpoints in a 0-100 system than a -18 to 38 system. Thus, Fahrenheit is more intuitive for the average person.
I should note that if you are a scientist, the argument completely changes. If you are doing experiments and making calcualtions across a much wider range of temperatures, Celsius and Kelvin are much more intuitive. But we are talking about the average human experience, and for that situation, I maintain Fahrenheit supremacy
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.
further arguments
It’s not about the specific numbers, but the range that they cover. It’s about the relation of the scale to our lived experience. Hypothetically, if you wanted to design a temperature scale around our species, you would assign the range of 0-100 to the range that would be the most frequently utilized, because those are the shortest numbers. It’s not an absolute range, but the middle of a bell curve which covers 95% of practical scenarios that people encounter. It doesn’t make any sense to start that range at some arbitrary value like 1000 or -18.
When the temperature starts to go above the human body temperature, most humans cannot survive in those environments. Thus, they would have little reason to describe such a temperature. Celsius wastes many double digit numbers between 40-100 that are rarely used. Instead, it forces you to use more negative numbers.
This winter, many days were in the 10s and 20s where I live. Using Celsius would have been marginally more inconvenient in those scenarios, which happen every winter. This is yet another benefit of Fahrenheit, it has a set of base 10 divisions that can be easily communicated, allowing for a convenient level of uncertainty when describing a temperature.
the end is nigh
Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
100C is literally instant death.
Laughs in Finnish (while sipping beer in a 100C Sauna)
He will surely die on his hill… ALONE !
Yes, a totally safe thing to do 🙄
The starting temperature is 110 degrees Celsius. Half a litre of water will be poured on the stove every 30 seconds.
Well, that’s just dumb. That’s a steam boiler, not a sauna.
On 7 August 2010, Russian finalist and former third-place finisher Vladimir Ladyzhensky and Finnish five-time champion Timo Kaukonen passed out after six minutes of 110 °C (230 °F) heat, both suffering from serious burns and trauma. According to a spectator, Kaukonen was able to leave the sauna with assistance, but Ladyzhensky had to be dragged out, suffering from convulsions, burns, and blisters.[5] Ladyzhensky died despite resuscitation and Kaukonen was rushed to the hospital.[6] He was reported to suffer from extreme burn injuries, and his condition was described as critical, but stable.
I guess that would put a damper on future competitions. Seems like something from an old Simpsons episode.
Unsafe, yes, instant death? no.
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.
A) Fahrenheit has an appropriate level of granularity for humans
B) Fahrenheit has an intuitive frame of reference for humans
Celsius and Kelvin do not.
I don’t want to fight about this I just think it’s actually true, and I also think Europeans get insanely defensive about stuff like this for no reason.
A) So is Celsius, you do everything in double digits until you turn on your oven.
B) If 50F was actually room temperature (the middle of too hot and too cold), I could agree. The fact that is is not means for me the intuition is learned and not natural. And that I have to learn a few anchorpoints to convert my own intuition when I ever visit the US.
Idk how your A relates to mine, if anything that’s more about the frame of reference, not the granularity. It’s good that you rarely have to use triple digits, but you do have to use negative numbers quite frequently.
You have to use negative numbers more frequently with Celsius > Celsius has a less intuitive frame of reference
Each Celsius degree is nearly two Fahrenheit degrees > Celsius is less granular
The reason I argue the more granular Fahrenheit is more intuitive is because a one degree change should intuitively be quite minor. But since you only have like 40 or 50 degrees to describe the entire gamut of human experiences with Celsius, it blends together a bit too much. I know that people will say to use decimals, but its the same flaw as negative numbers. It’s simply unintuitive and cumbersome.
B) 66F is room temperature. Halfway between freezing (32F) and 100F.
the intuition is learned and not natural.
All scales have to be learned, obviously. It’s far easier to create intuitive anchorpoints in a 0-100 system than a -18 to 38 system. Thus, Fahrenheit is more intuitive for the average person.
I should note that if you are a scientist, the argument completely changes. If you are doing experiments and making calcualtions across a much wider range of temperatures, Celsius and Kelvin are much more intuitive. But we are talking about the average human experience, and for that situation, I maintain Fahrenheit supremacy
Your point about intuition is moot, imo, because if you didn’t grow up with F it’s just as unintuitive as C is to you.
When you’re used to it the usage of decimals and negative numbers is neither complicated nor unintuitive because you’ve learned to know this intuitively for your whole life.
I could argue, that freezing temps outside being below 0 are unintuitive because it’s obvious to me that negative temps mean it’s literally freezing cold. That’s intuitive for me because I‘ be used that my entire life. Same as room temperature being 20°C. It just makes sense to me because I‘ve always know it that way.
Your “intuitive anchor points” 32 or 66 or whatever are completely nonsensical and unintuitive to someone whose brain is wired in Celsius. Because we don’t think in -18 to 38 but rather -20 to 40, if you want to think of it like that (or -40 to 20 I suppose, if you live somewhere where it’s colder). But in all honesty, in my day to day life, I don’t think about that, because I just know what a celsius value means intuitively.
Fahrenheit is more intuitive for the average American, not the average person.
I don’t think you’re taking into account that the average person is really bad at math. There’s a lot of people around the world that are illiterate.
Anything can be intuitive if you’re intelligent enough. But when something is described as intuitive, that implies that it can be easily understood. Put it this way, if F is 1/10 difficulty, C is 2/10 and Kelvin is 5/10.
Would you also argue that Kelvin is intuitive?
Just because Celsius works perfectly fine doesn’t mean that Fahrenheit doesn’t make more intuitive sense.
A) Fahrenheit has an appropriate level of granularity for humans
B) Fahrenheit has an intuitive frame of reference for humans
true.
Celsius […] do not.
false.
Europeans get insanely defensive about stuff like this for no reason.
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 😤
…
Thoughts?
spoiler
Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
copy pasting now are we? here was my response to the same copied comment:
but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way.
As you might imagine I completely disagree.
For my purposes 20’s, 30’s, negative 10’s and so on is perfectly good, and I would describe my purposes as human.
Again, this is based on your, and my, learned reference points. Of course you feel the scale of the farenheit is better suited for describing your life, those are your learned reference points.
I have my own learned reference points based on the Celsius scale I grew up with and, suprise suprise, to me they’re superior.
copy pasting now are we?
You replied to me on multiple different threads, so I didn’t realize you were the same person. Generally if you’re serious about a debate, it’s best to keep things to one comment chain. Otherwise you’re just kinda yelling at somebody.
Unlike Americans, celsius and kelvin users are not afraid of decimals, which fullfills all your graularity needs if you have them. But mostly it isn’t even needed because you literally cannot feel the difference.
You’ve provided zero proof of either statement.
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.
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.
It does make sense. But no, I cannot personally relate to being H2O and freezing into a block of ice or evaporating into the air.
As a human, I can relate to when I feel cold, and when I feel hot. And a scale where I feel hot at 30 degrees and cold at -10 is not even remotely intuitive.
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.
Human scale temperatures do line up with 0-100 on the Fahrenheit scale. Certainly much better than 0-100 on the Celsius scale. How are you even disputing that???
Of course what you grew up with makes the most sense, but everyone down voting you for saying 0–100 makes more sense in a vacuum than -20–40 always makes me laugh in these kinds of threads.
The timing of this comment is really killing me. Americans were just going to bed when I posted it 😂
It’s all learned behaviour. If you grew up with F that makes total sense and C sounds ridiculous. If you grew up with C that’s totally intuitive for anyone, just as much as F, so using a scale that has no point outside of the weather sounds dumb. Neither system is more intuitive by any means. Both systems ave benefits and downsides.
Whenever I talk to americans and they use F I need to convert it because I grew up with C and that just makes more sense to me, even if I know the “0-100 F is according to human experience” thing. Like sure, 80F is hot, but how hot is it? Oh 27C that’s hot but not extreme.
Arguing one or the other is superior is not only pointless but also just silly
wait 80f is 27c? That’s not hot at all
But no, I cannot personally relate
And there we have it. You are not used to the system, so you can’t personally relate to it. Which is a perfectly acceptable opinion to hold. The problem is that you make a lot of claims about a system you are not as familiar with, most notably that it isn’t useful for what it is actually being used for by the majority of humans.
Weird because you’re made of mostly water. Like 70 something percent.
So when my neighbors mother from another climate came to visit during the summer, I was wearing shorts and t-shirts but she a winter jacket. According to whos experience did Fahrenheit match the human experience? It’s very variable and cannot be made to fit everyone. That water freezes at 0 is just as arbitrary but at least it’s an experience/observation anyone can share. If it’s 0°C outside puddles will freeze. Is it warmer or colder than when ice and snow melts is as good a reference as any, and to me having grown up with it, it feels superior because it’s what I’m used to.
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.
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.
Really? My whole thesis paper about how humans immediately explode into a million pieces when they reach 100 degrees Celsius is completely ruined. How will I ever recover?
Anything below 10F is really cold for a human too, and so is anything below -10F what’s your point?
My point is self evident, you’re willfully ignoring it.
My point is self evident, you’re willfully ignoring it.
No it isn’t. No I am not. In fact that argument is quite a big sign there’s no actual evidence.
I am not trying to say Celsius is better than Farenheit. I however don’t agree with your argument that F is somehow more suited to humans.It is simply a question of which one you are used to, and have built up an internal system of references to. Just as you feel your references are self evident, I feel the same about Celsius.
I have admittedly expounded at length in this thread already. If my point isn’t obvious, I’m not sure how.
Maybe I explained it slightly better here.
spoiler
It’s not about the specific numbers, but the range that they cover. It’s about the relation of the scale to our lived experience. Hypothetically, if you wanted to design a temperature scale around our species, you would assign the range of 0-100 to the range that would be the most frequently utilized, because those are the shortest numbers. It’s not an absolute range, but the middle of a bell curve which covers 95% of practical scenarios that people encounter. It doesn’t make any sense to start that range at some arbitrary value like 1000 or -18.
When the temperature starts to go above the human body temperature, most humans cannot survive in those environments. Thus, they would have little reason to describe such a temperature. Celsius wastes many double digit numbers between 40-100 that are rarely used. Instead, it forces you to use more negative numbers.
This winter, many days were in the 10s and 20s where I live. Using Celsius would have been marginally more inconvenient in those scenarios, which happen every winter. This is yet another benefit of Fahrenheit, it has a set of base 10 divisions that can be easily communicated, allowing for a convenient level of uncertainty when describing a temperature.
Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
Are you high or some shit?
Yes, but that’s beside the point
I have admittedly expounded at length in this thread already. If my point isn’t obvious, I’m not sure how.
It’s because you are trying to prove your subjective experience is better than some other subjective experiences.
It’s just simply not how it works, it might be best to you, but refusing to accept that others subjective experiences differing from yours are valid is frankly narrow minded.
You are making subjective arguments and acting like they are objective cold hard facts.
I would not mind if you were to expand
My argument is actually pretty simple, but people could always challenge these assertions, in which case it would get more complicated.
A) Fahrenheit has an appropriate level of granularity for humans
B) Fahrenheit has an intuitive frame of reference for humans
Celsius and Kelvin do not. Celsius is adequate because it’s based on water, and all life on earth is also based on water, so it’s not totally out of our wheelhouse. But for humans specifically I think Fahrenheit is the clear answer.
One point that many may overlook is that most of us here are relatively smart and educated. There are a good number of people on this planet who just aren’t very good with numbers. Obviously a genius could easily adapt their mind to Kelvin or whatever.
But Fahrenheit is the temperature scale of the proletariat, the working man, the average Joe. And I’m here for it.
Multiple problems with you assertions.
A) Fahrenheit has an appropriate level of granularity for humans
You know that Celsius uses decimals for everything, so really not much difference. Furthermore the granularity of Fahrenheit doesn‘t have any advantages. You won‘t be able to feel wether its 70°F or 71°F outside, nor if you’ve got a fever of 101°F or 102°F. You need to look at a thermometer. And please don‘t reply saying that decimals are complicated. The majority of the planet, except certain Countries seem to manage just fine. Would be quite laughable if one certain country thinks it‘s too complicated.
B) Fahrenheit has an intuitive frame of reference for humans
Not really sure what you are referencing. I think it just stems from you growing up with Fahrenheit, so not feeling comfortable with anything else.
But Fahrenheit is the temperature scale of the proletariat, the working man, the average Joe. And I’m here for it.
I mean the “proletariat” of the majority of the world uses Celsius.
Not really sure what you are referencing. I think it just stems from you growing up with Fahrenheit, so not feeling comfortable with anything else.
Read some of my other comments. 0-100 is more intuitive than -18-38, no? None of you have even been willing to admit that simple fact yet.
Furthermore the granularity of Fahrenheit doesn‘t have any advantages. You won‘t be able to feel wether its 70°F or 71°F outside, nor if you’ve got a fever of 101°F or 102°F. You need to look at a thermometer. And please don‘t reply saying that decimals are complicated. The majority of the planet, except certain Countries seem to manage just fine. Would be quite laughable if one certain country thinks it‘s too complicated.
Agree to disagree.
Read some of my other comments. 0-100 is more intuitive than -18-38, no? None of you have even been willing to admit that simple fact yet.
Well because it stands on a false promise. Neither 0°F = the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride nor 100°F has any „real“ meaning. The other limit established was his best estimate of the average human body temperature, originally set at 90 °F, then 96 °F . How is that intuitive.
If you are refering to negative degrees, quite useful for telling how the weather is going to be. And to prevent the „negative numbers are hard“-Argument. It seems to work for the majority of people.
For the human bodytemperature argument often throw around: they are inconsiquential numbers in both systems.
Well because it stands on a false promise. Neither 0°F = the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride nor 100°F has any „real“ meaning.
It’s not about the specific numbers, but the range that they cover. It’s about the relation of the scale to our lived experience. Hypothetically, if you wanted to design a temperature scale around our species, you would assign the range of 0-100 to the range that would be the most frequently utilized, because those are the shortest numbers. It’s not an absolute range, but the middle of a bell curve which covers 95% of practical scenarios that people encounter. It doesn’t make any sense to start that range at some arbitrary value like 1000 or -18.
When the temperature starts to go above the human body temperature, most humans cannot survive in those environments. Thus, they would have little reason to describe such a temperature. Celsius wastes many double digit numbers between 40-100 that are rarely used. Instead, it forces you to use more negative numbers.
This winter, many days were in the 10s and 20s where I live. Using Celsius would have been marginally more inconvenient in those scenarios, which happen every winter. This is yet another benefit of Fahrenheit, it has a set of base 10 divisions that can be easily communicated, allowing for a convenient level of uncertainty when describing a temperature.
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.
Thoughts?
spoiler
Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Except you don’t, because all instrumentation uses celsius, as that is the sensible system. Also to human perception a difference of 1 degree C is already negligible, thinking adding an extra digit has any benefits is lunacy.
Any response to the rest of my points?
Also to human perception a difference of 1 degree C is already negligible, thinking adding an extra digit has any benefits is lunacy.
Source?
Simple experiment. Hold a pan at 50ºC for a minute, then hold a different pan for a minute at 51ºC. Once you’re done, tell me which burn hurt more, okay? :)
Hey buddy this is a bit much for a discussion about temperature scales, no? I’m quite shocked by this response tbh, if I knew people were this sensitive about Celsius I would have been more diplomatic in my original comment.
You’ll never know what it’s like to enjoy a sunny summer day, not a cloud in the sky, with a high of 82. Unlucky.
'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?
Where are you from that 10C is pretty comfortable and 20C is getting hot? Greetings from the middle east :)
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)
When I was a kid, I learned about negative numbers pretty early on. It was a perfectly normal part of life, since the temp was in the negative a lot of the year. Made sense to me. Temp is below zero? Water is solid. . Temp above zero? Water is liquid. Fahrenheit doesn’t make much sense to me, inherently, because I don’t have an integral frame of reference, built over decades of familiarity. Celcius on the other hand, it just makes sense!
Sure, negatives aren’t hard, nor are decimals. But I should remind you we’re talking about a population that wouldn’t buy a third-pounder hamburger because they thought a quarter-pounder was more. Fractions are covered pretty early on, too!
Joking aside, if F actually was based on something specific and measurable, it’d also make sense. Then it’s just a matter of what you got used to. Granted, human temps vary, so you can’t just make 100 the human temp and 0 the temp a human dies, so that’s an impossibity. (Water can vary too under circumstances if I remember right, but not quite as much or as unpredictable as some human based metric).
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.
Yeah, I know. It still moves the zero point and forces it out of ratio, but I prefer it. I know both F and C since I have to use both regularly. F is set to C, too, I think. F = 1.8c + 36, I think?
No, it just moves the zero point, no ratio change: 0°C = 273,15 K / just a simple addition/subtraction.
Colloquially you can also ignore the 0,15 and make it even simpler.
Oh yeah, you’re right, it’s just Kelvin on a F scale. I shouldn’t look at formulas at 2am when I should be sleeping, lol
Only Kelvin is like that
False. Rankine is too.
I didn’t find any others in a quick glance at the wiki, but it would be easy to imagine a scale like 0 at absolute zero, and 100 at the freezing point of water or something.
Never heard of Rankine, but it sounds like a Kelvin with a similar conversation to F (9/5, or 1.8, only inverse). Description suggestions as much, too. If I told students about it when talking about ratio scales, though, pretty sure it’d be a tad too much. Most haven’t even heard of Kelvin!
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
Huh, TIL. That’s actually pretty cool. Kelvin moving up the rankings 😅
Haha, I teach statistics and it’s usually a tough one walk on. You need a natural zero for ratios, even if the concept is a little weird (like 0 height). 2m is twice 1m, etc. My go to with interval (the non ratio continuous metric) tends to be likart scales. Or yelp stars, or any other arbitrary zero. I do mention temps, though
Makes sense. I always knew Kelvin started at absolute zero, but I don’t think I had ever heard of a ratio scale. I’m sure it has some kind of statistical implications about how you can analyze the data right?
Yeah, something like that. Scales of measurement is mostly a formality in undergrad but it does determine eventually what you can and can’t do with that scale.
Looks like you made the mistake of posting this when the European downvote gang was awake.
I just got absolutely obliterated. Believe it or not, I got up to +10 on that initial comment at one point. I think if I had formally presented my argument initially, it may have gone better.
I just didn’t realize that mentioning Celsius was going to set off this kind of reaction. It’s so weird the things that different cultures hold sacred.
Lol I’ve got burned by it before too
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.
By that logic, there’s also no such thing as a meter either. It’s defined as a distance light travels in a time interval proportional to the inverse of a frequency related to the caesium-133 atom. Definitions don’t mean there’s “no such thing” as something, it’s just a matter of if the units are useful in a given context. And meters are more useful in most everyday contexts.
In timekeeping, there are so called stratums to describe how correct a clock is.
Stratum 0 is a physical process, an inherent property of the universe. An atomic clock would be stratum 0.
Stratum 1 is a clock defined based on a stratum 0 clock. For example, GPS clocks are usually stratum 1, so are timeservers at universities with atomic clocks.
Stratum 2 is a clock defined based on a stratum 1 clock, for example, your router’s ntp server if it syncs its time based on gps or a university’s timeserver.
So if we adopt this jargon for units:
Meter is a stratum 1 unit, defined based on the stratum 0 properties of lightspeed and cesium resonance.
Inch is a stratum 2 unit, defined based on the stratum 1 meter.
Fuck 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?
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.
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.
Looking at some of the literacy stats coming out of American education, I’m not surprised that some Americans think that the concept of a negative number is an undue inconvenience.
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.
19c, might be a bit too cold to wear shorts.
21c, shorts will be fine.
+15 for shorts, or +10 if doing sports
7C I wear a hat, 9C my ears are fine
the temperature also isn’t the only thing that matters, it also matters what the weather is like, how much moisture is in the air, and how windy it is.
With no wind you can have like -5°C and it’s perfectly fine if you just wear some fluffy clothing, but if the wind starts picking up it can be +5°C and you’ll feel like you’re going to die.
True, though this factor applies equally to both farenheit and celcius right?
When I’m going to be I can absolutely feel 68 vs 70F
Boiling water feels really fucking hot which is why Celsius makes more sense
I doff my cap to those whose experiences have led to the statement “boiling water feels really fucking hot”.
0 fahrenheit is pretty much random when it comes to ordinary life. Well it’s pretty random when it comes to anything.
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)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.
As an American, I wish I could learn Celsius
It’s good to know how your gpu feels
C = (°F-32)/1.8
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.
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.
Yeah, or the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride. Wait, that’s Fahrenheit already.
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
For sure! At one point in winter I had to wear a second pair of pants to get through the day, and it was only in the 10°C range…
0-5 and 5-10 is more like it
Yes, that was my first thought!
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 :)
I mean, you can use decimals, but I understand your point.
OK, yeah, that’s fair…
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.
But it doesn’t really make sense, it’s just some nonsense that sounds clever
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.
75% is a C which is average for school grades, and a 7/10 is widely considered an average score for things like movies. 70-75F being the average room temp is pretty intuitive when used alongside other common scales.
Wow, that is some Olympic level mental gymnastics you’ve got there…bravo.
How? The average American already has 70 as a reference point for average. What part do you disagree with?
Well, if the average American views 7/10 as the average on a 1-10 scale, it really just proves that their view is skewed, objectively incorrect, and cannot be used as a useful measure in this. Being wrong in multiple (and completely unrelated) instances does not make any of them correct.
I mean I never said it wasn’t stupid, just that it’s intuitive for Americans. 5/10 should be average.
But I’m not even sure that’s purely an American thing. Go to a rating website like IMDB or MyAnimeList, 7/10 is considered average. I’m genuinely surprised that you’re surprised by this.
Converting from Fahrenheit to Celsius is quite easy. All you need to do is:
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()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.
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.
tell me the last time a regular person had platinum-iridium ingot
What, you don’t?
But yeah, I agree, units are made up. I mean, why is the boiling point at 100C and not any other number? Someone made it up.
I’m just saying the argument “0F is really cold” is just as true as -10F is really cold or +10F is really cold.
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.
Is there a difference between 19, 20, and 21 Celsius?
Yes, as anyone that’s ever worked in an office can tell you.
Edit: Apparently I was expecting too much cognitive ability / common knowledge so let me be clearer: Generally women prefer it warmer (>20), men like it cooler (<20). It’s a very common office discussion.
Is there a difference between 19, 20, and 21 Celsius?
First off, nobody claimed that Celsius is based on human perception so humans not being able to differentiate between these is simply irrelevant to the argument.
Second, the bounds of 0 and 100 are based on the freezing temp of water which are specific, non-arbitrary temperatures.I’m not arguing one system over the other, I just think the “human scale” argument has been made up just to have an argument.
So either way the “human scale” idea is fucking dumb
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 was replying to a (now gone) post on how Kelvin is for science, Fahrenheit for humans ,and Celsius is useless. It should give a perspective how to get from Kelvin to Celsius, not give a wildly off-topic history lesson.
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.
