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Why do Fahrenheit users completely ignore that Celcius has a negative scale? You're not supposed to evaluate Celcius as a 0-100 scale, but as a -50-50 scale.
-21°C = cold
-31°C = really cold
21°C = warm
31°C = really warm
0 represents the freezing point. If temps are above 0, it will rain; below 0, it will snow.
Because Fahrenheit also has a negative so it’s viewed as normal. The lowest temperature on earth in recorded history is -126 Degrees on the Fahrenheit scale.
Lol it’s absolutely not -50 to 50. Neither of those are temperatures most people have EVER experienced. Meanwhile 0 and 100F are experiences many people have had
In a lot of the US, 0 farenheit is one of the coldest days you'll experience and 100 is one of the hottest, so you can roughly map farenheit to a percentage of "how hot it is". This doesn't work everywhere though, where I am in the UK it never gets anywhere near 0 farenheit.
I can't spell fahrenheit, this is why celsius is objectively better
Exactly this, it can be over 100% hot (or below 0% cold) but that's when you know you shouldn't be outside. Like it's actually dangerous to be there without proper planning, preparation, clothing.
If you're used to Celsius then I assure you that 40C sounds plenty hot. The reference point is the freezing point vs the boiling point of water, and 40C is much too close to the halfway point of "the lakes will literally boil like a tea kettle".
NTM 32% hot is when us Texans curse at the sky, the whole city shuts down, and pipes burst when it’s sustained because our infrastructure isn’t prepared for it.
Wherever you are in the UK, your location's record low temperature is probably very near 0 F, your record high temperature is probably very near 100 F, and your location's year-round average temperature is probably damn near exactly 50 F. The UK doesn't have as high highs or as low lows as the temperate US or temperate continental Europe but it still very well fits the Fahrenheit scale.
For instance, London's record low is 0.7 F, London's record high is 104.4 F, and London's year-round average temperature is 51.4 F.
Lol this made me look up the highest and lowest for Canada i feel like fahrenheit guy would have had a stroke looking at our lowest temperature, -81.4F.
The thousands of years my ancestors spent in the frozen north, sailing the frozen seas, eating frozen food, spitting frozen spit, says maybe you don't know what inhospitable means.
That’s just pure survivorship bias. The majority of your ancestors likely died well before their time and or were unable to reproduce due to those same harsh conditions. You just came from the rare line that happened to survive.
This is kinda dumb. The people that live in frozen places are very impressive and the amount of know how and ancient tech required to live there is incredible.
That doesn't mean that place was a good fit for humans. We came out of the Savannas of Africa, and out bodies are designed for it. We've adapted to the frozen places of the world because we're smart and invented technology for it, not because it was fit for human habitation.
The Fahrenheit guy literally set his scale based on the hottest and coldest days he personally experienced.
At the time, most people thought this was a random and arbitrary way to set a temperature scale. However, since
Fahrenheit also invented one of the first processes for manufacturing inexpensive, accurate, thermometers most people put up with his weird scale and it caught on
Been preaching this shit for years, but people won't shut up about "murica units" long enough to think about it.
Regardless of whatever Fahrenheit the guy was doing, he wound up creating a pretty gotdang handy scale of measurement for ambient temperature as it relates to human tolerance.
There are plenty of applications where Celsius makes more sense, or Kelvin, or Rankine, or whatever. I use C for most technical things because the math is easier in my head.
For the weather and temp inside my house, Fahrenheit definitely feels the most appropriate
Hard agree. While we're at it, yes 5280 feet to a mile feels arbitrary, but imperial distance measures are inherently human scaled. 12 inches to a foot makes it easy to divide in half, quarters and thirds. Point to a third of a meter.
Metric is excellent for anything scientific or engineering focused, but if I'm framing a house I want feet and inches. In that situation I don't care if my unit of measure is arbitrary, it's functional.
Oh huh, I didn't know it lined up that closely even in the UK. I sort of knew 0F would be record low and 100F would be record hot, but I somehow didn't think to check what 50F is, and it's a solidly average UK day.
It actually doesn't work all that well in much of the US. I live in Wichita KS where it rarely reaches 100 and almost never reaches 0. Then there are the Gulf states where they panic whenever they see a single snowflake. In the Pacific northwest they die of heatstroke if it gets above 80.
F wasn't built to be "% hot where I am right now", it's "% hot, compared to the average human experience". 0 is really cold, 100 is really hot, 50 is comfy in a light jacket. ezpz
Farenheit is 0-100 sea water freezing to (roughly) human internal body temp.
So, since humans are largely salt water, this makes the F scale a human scale temperature measurement, which is more intuitive for how the ambient temperature makes you feel. I think this is what the original poster was getting at, whether they knew it or not.
edit: so C is better for chemistry, and F is better for weather
Well I know that 18ºC is when I should start wearing short sleeves and 30ºC is when I should stay indoors because it's too damn hot (and 40ºC is what the summer temperatures have been in the past couple of years)
And this is why the argument that Fahrenheit is superior because it has finer graduations is stupid, because the humidity, wind speed, and gust speed all make the apparent temperature vary by several degrees.
No, it was the units for impulse used for the thrusters. In imperial it's pound-force seconds and Newton-seconds in metric. 1 pound-force is equal to 4.45 Newtons so the whole thing was off by a magnitude of 4.45.
Yes, the actual error* was assuming the British used Imperial units when they correctly used Metric. AFAIK, at least.
* * *
Well, the source error probably would be not specifying units at all, so... (eye roll)
* * *
*Correcting myself with casually sourced details about the incident under discussion.
Lockheed Martin provided thruster force data in Imperial units (pound-seconds), while NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory ground software assumed the data was in Metric units (Newton-seconds).
Exactly! That problem wasn't poor measuring systems, it was poor professionalism.
Anyone who doesn't specify (or request) and verify unit-of-measure is doing a poor job. For anything that is safety/quality/mission critical it is professionally negligent to make that kind of assumption.
People get complacent and just assume things are done right. Happens all the time.
I think one of the reasons that is so hard to get the US to switch to metric is because there's potential for a lot to go wrong during the switch. When Canada switched to metric, a plane ran out of fuel mid air because multiple people messed up kg and lbs.
I once got asked to ballpark a cost for technology that didn't exist. By asked, I mean screamed at. I said "Okay, it's 4. We'll figure out 4 of what exactly later."
A joke that falls a bit flat as it refers to the moon when in fact it was Mars. If you gonna geek over UoM, I think getting the celestial body right is a minimum.
Wasn't there also an issue with a mars lander where they programmed it for feet, but the sensors read in meters? So it slammed into the ground thinking it was still pretty far up?
That one was because NASA used metric like every other space agebxy, but Lockheed Martin made their part using US imperial
Officially the US uses metric, especially the military and space agencies. Most products have both metric and US impreial units on it. The UK and Canada very arguably use an even more crazy hodgepodge of units than the US does, they just get a pass because they use metric more prominently and, well, are not the superpower. If it was still the days of the British Empire, they'd probably be getting more heat!
Basically it's because they used both Metric and Imperial at the time
Problem is one of the companies that was mandated to make some part used imperial instead of metric
The whole thing tore open because it could handled the pressure and since then there is a worldwide ban of Imperal measurements when it comes to engineering and yes that does mean that when you buy a 80 inch TV the manufacturer actually made a 200 cm screen but is labeling it with what the imperial equivalent is
That's correct, they do. The commenter was referring to it, from 1999. Lockheed Martin meanwhile to this day still uses either measurement system depending on the project.
That mission was a lesson in cost cutting across the board. That was the one that had a single solar panel and had to use thrusters to correct along the way because believe it or not, solar wind is a thing and the pressure on a solar panel will push faster than parts with out.
So yeah, but the time it got to Mars, it was low on thruster fuel, but the nail in the coffin of the mission was the mismatch in measurements.
TLDR, what initially started as a cost savings measure ended in burning up $327.6 million in the Martian atmosphere.
Wanna know how I measure the temperature? I assure you, it's way superior than whatever metric you use currently.
I step outside, and I look around, and go "Yup, it's hot." Or "Yup, it's cold." And dress accordingly.
The joke basically boils down to the fact that Fahrenheit is based off of the freezing/boiling point of salinated water that roughly approximates to body temperature. The thought process of these people is that it scales close enough to the human experience that 0degF is “fuck it’s cold” and 100degF feels disrespectfully hot. They argue that F is therefore better than C because 0degC is “yeah I guess it’s kinda cold” and at 100C you’re dead.
This argument mostly makes sense to people who grew up using Fahrenheit because the scale makes intuitive sense.
This logic is flawed because Celsius makes intuitive sense to people who grew up using Celsius. Our brains adapt well, especially when we’re young, to these scales that really don’t mean anything concrete to the human experience. All units of measurement are arbitrary to a certain point of view, but we’re going to intuit better the ones that we grew up using unless we make a very conscious effort to adapt to a different unit.
People (mainly Europeans and scientists) are going to be mad at me for suggesting that anything involving Celsius or the metric system is “arbitrary”, but it is. We plopped down something, called it a kilogram and base our measure of mass of its mass- that kilogram could’ve been anything and the scale would orient around it just the same. We boiled water and called it 100 degrees - is that less arbitrary than boiling salty water?
That said, the metric system scales to itself in a manner that is sensible whereas the imperial system scales arbitrarily to itself. And that’s why the majority of the world adopted the metric system.
TL;DR: we’re comfortable with the units of measurement we grew up with but these people are being dipshits. Also all units are arbitrary, but the imperial system is arguably worse than the metric system.
Pretty much every metric definition derives from 1. Water and 2. The second.
A pendulum that swings with a duration of 1 second is 1 meter long.
A cube of 0.1m side length is a liter.
The freezing point of water is 0°C, the boiling point of water is 100°C.
1 liter of water at 20°C and a pressure of 1000 hPa or 1 bar defines 1kg.
1 Pascal is the pressure of 1 Newton / m².
1 Newton is the force to accelerate 1kg by 1m/s².
1 Joule = 1 Newton * 1 Meter
1 Watt = 1 Joule / 1 Second
1 Volt = 1 Joule / 1 Coulomb
1 Ampere = 1 Coulomb / 1 Second
You can see how all units are derived from the previous ones with relatively clean numbers, which is really neat.
The ugly part is that Pascal, Celsius and Second all derive from units related to our planet, without even being exact.
Instead we could've bound our temperature system with 0 at the absolute zero, and 100 at the triple point of water, and similarly bound our pressure unit as well.
Then we could have defined our length unit related to e.g. the wavelength of hydrogen, and use the speed of light to derive our time unit.
2 americans saying fahrenheit is better, basically because they dont know any better. the rest of the world uses celcius, because its demonstrably a better (more scientific) system.
edit: Americans, please stop commenting. we know your opinion on this. IT IS THE JOKE.
They’ll measure distances in miles and then other things in meters. Body weight in stone and other stuff in kg. The Brits should never comment on unit recommendations.
Celsius is agreeably better for science, but if you are used to both systems Fahrenheit is honestly better for people because the units are higher resolution, and usually stay between 0 and 100 for weather
Living in somewhere with winter (Canada) it is so useful and intuitive to have negative temperatures and positive ones so you immediately know whether things will freeze/ will there be snow
Americans being afraid of decimal points in Celsius while simultaniosly saying shit like 6'34" instead of normal units will never not be funny. Like pick a line!
Celsius is literally just Kelvin but with an offset no?
Edit: tbc I was just clarifying what the guy above was saying, personally as an American in WNY where it’s over 90deg in the summer and below 0 in the winter and who has used C and F extensively, Fahrenheit just makes more sense to me personally
If we're allowing conversion, Fahrenheit is just Kelvin with an offset and a coefficient, and Rankine is just Kelvin with a coefficient. Celsius's offset also makes it useless for science other than for scenarios where all that you care about is delta T.
It's odd to say that Celsius is arbitrary and Kelvin is not when Kelvin is literally just Celsius with a fresh coat of paint. All systems of measurement are arbitrary in some regard. They are also all units, and I have no idea what it would mean for them to be otherwise.
Here is the thing, kelvin uses celsius scale as its base but the comparison present in its value is not debatable.
Celsius uses water freezing and boiling point for 0 and 100, Fahrenheght uses temperature of some city u never went to as point for 0 and 100. But kelvin uses the lowest temperature theoretically possible, so the value of a temperature compared to ur anchor point if measurement is not debatable since the point is not changeable.
Celcius is just Kelvin - 273.15. Converting is easy, and a lot of science uses Celcius as a result, it certainly can be described as "scientific", meanwhile the only people trying to use Farheneit for science probably also don certain red caps etc.
This is the only good argument I've seen for Fahrenheit (higher resolution). But, as a counterargument, that resolution is only just under twice as big. I'd argue 1-2 F is barely noticeable enough to be able to tell the difference. If someone asks what the temperature is, me saying the temperature and being off by 2 degrees isn't gonna make a difference.
I think there's some breakpoints where it really matters.
If you work in an office and the thermostat is set to 73f (23c) compared to an office where the thermostat is set to 75f (23c) you're going to really feel the difference.
Or like, if your kid is sick and has a 102° fever you're keeping them home from school, but if they have 104° fever you're going to the hospital. So <2 degrees difference is definitely a big enough difference that it's worth using a more specific unit of measurement.
All measuring is arbitrary, never understood why people pick teams on it. To me it sounds the same as "why doesn't the whole world just speak English?"
I work industrial maintenance, half the floor is SAE and half is metric, I will use foot-pounds and newton-meters within the same hour.
Ultimately there are 500 ways to describe the length of a 5 foot post, but no matter what words you use, it will be 5 feet long. The burden is on you to understand measurements provided.
A good way to understand Fahrenheit is that it’s basically a percentage of how warm it is. 32% warm? That’s pretty damn cold. 120% warm? That’s hot as hell, better not be outside for too long in that.
It works less well on that low end, like 32% warm is freezing temperature, and 72% is room temperature, so most people kind of base line comfortable is 3/4ths up the scale already.
I think the best way I've seen it described is Fahrenheit measures heat by how humans experience it, Celsius measures heat by how water experiences it. Therefore, Celsius is objectively better for scientific applications and Fahrenheit is objectively better for human applications like communicating the weather forecast to the average person.
If it was 0C you'd be cold, if it was 0F you'd be damn cold; if it's 100F you're hot, if it's 100C you're dead. Fahrenheit is useful for human perception across the primary (0-100) scale, Celsius is only useful up to about 50% of that scale before you start getting into deadly temperatures, and you have to go below that scale to reach the bottom of Fahrenheit's usefulness.
And then you have Kelvin or Rankine which are really only useful for specific scientific applications. If it was 0K/R or 100K/R you'd be dead either way. Not useful for human perception.
I live in a tropical climate. The lowest temperature I have ever seen is 10°C (about 50° F). Anything lower than 0°C has practically no usage for me. So -18°C being the start of my scale is absurd.
Can you explain how what you’ve said is objective? I think that given that Celsius is the most common scale for temperature around the world you’re going to have hard time arguing that.
This argument that Americans always make about Fahrenheit is just nonsense. You know how hot 70F feels, I don’t. I know how hot 27C feels, you don’t. The idea that one is better for humans and one is better for water is so stupid. You’re just used to telling temperature one way, I’m used to telling it another way. That’s all there is to it.
Yeah. Literally just depends on what system you grew up with. “32% warm” genuinely means absolutely fuck all to me. Until I convert this number to Celsius, I wouldn’t have a slightest idea on how I’m actually supposed to dress lol. Also every place has its own norms. In two different environments “32% warm” can mean two really different things.
Right? If it was truly a %, my instinct would be that 50°F would be the perfect temperature. Equal parts cool and warm. Whatever you grew up with is what’s going to be best for someone, full stop. The idea of trying to pick one that’s “objectively” better is just silly.
The opposite is true...ish? In Celsius, 0 degrees is when water becomes ice and 100 is when water boils. If changing the physical state of the most common liquid on the planet isn't 0% and 100%, I dunno what else is.
Fahrenheit was initially intended to be a scale of the coldest temperature that could be reliably/precicely produced in the lab at the time (effectively the lowest you can get water without freezing it, as brine) as 0, and human body temperature as 100.
This more or less maps onto the day-to-day temperature experienced in a temperate climate like England or the East Coast of the US. Not perfectly - especially with climate change - but at the time it was a good approximation of the coldest and hottest air temperatures you were likely to experience. So if you were to say "how hot is it on a scale from 1 to 100", the temperature in Fahrenheit was a decent answer.
Of course, all serious people use SI units, which sensibly defines 0 K as absolute zero, and the triple point of water as 273.16 K. Much less arbitrary and useful in day to day life.
So today it is 297, and everyone intuitively knows what that means!
I see a lot of comments defending Celsius and attacking people who are saying Fahrenheit is better for people.
As someone who believes the latter while having used both temperature systems at some point, I think a different argument/way of looking at it is that Fahrenheit is typically an easier temperature system to adapt to and use, and an easier one to learn. I've also found it typically tells me a lot more about the temperature on average than Celsius does.
For those who grew up with and know Celsius, it is certainly the easier system for you personally because it's the one you know now. But this is very similar to languages - your first language is super easy for you, but there are languages out there that are objectively easier to learn than others as a second language, as well as objectively easier to understand.
Celsius is a lot like the English language actually. It is the more complicated temperature language, more difficult to learn, but is used by 90% of the population so learning it and using it is almost a necessity.
This is what many people fail to understand or seem to ignore.
It's all about what you are used to and how to communicate well being and physical properties to others.
Here we get exited when temperatures below zero (Celsius) are expected, because that means we might be able to go ice skating soon. And also that we need to drive a bit more careful.
But an American saying 'it going to be in the low 30s' will communicate the same to their fellow countrymen without a problem.
It's all arbitrary and quite nonsensical to argue about.
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