this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I've always hated this justification of Fahrenheit. For it to be a good argument, 50 °F would need to be the ideal comfortable temperature. But instead 50 is really fucking cold. 100 just isn't as hot as 0 is cold.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Fully agree with you. How does that make sense:

Really hot summer days (30°C) are 86°F

Usual summer days (25°C) are 77°F

Room temperature is ~70°F

Spring / autumn days (20°C) are 68°F

Chilly outside / late autumn / early spring days (~10°C) are 50°F

Cool outside / warm winter days (~0°C) are 32°F

Cold outside / usual winter days (-10°C) are ~15°F

Winter nights (bit below -20°C) are ~ -10°F

Fahrenheit users keep saying how strange it is to have negative temperatures when using °C, but it's just the same in Fahrenheit except the whole scale makes less sense since it's using fully arbitrary, not recreatable points for 0 and 100.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I mean, I deliberately avoided using terms like "hot summer days" and "usual winter day" because that's far more dependent on where you are. Where I am it's:

  • Really hot summer days (35 ℃)
  • Usual summer days (30 ℃)
  • Room temperature (24 ℃)
  • Spring / autumn days (25 ℃)
  • Chilly outside (18 ℃)
  • Cold outside / usual winter days (15 ℃)
  • Winter nights (10 ℃)

So I used words that are about the experience of a person in those temperatures in comfortable light clothing, rather than times of year. And obviously there's some subjectivity there, with some people being more comfortable in cold temperatures than others. But still, we're talking about the comfortable mid point varying from mid 20s to high 10s. There's no reasonable world in which 50 ℉ (10 ℃) is the midpoint.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Yes, it doesn't matter which example you take, Fahrenheit never makes sense imo.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think it depends on the person which is the problem, for me 50 isn't that cold but 100 is completely unbearable

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, 50 F is chilly.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

See that Celsius graph is precisely the nonsense I'm trying to point out. 0 ℃ isn't "fairly cold outside". It's literally the definition of freezing cold. 0 ℉ is "dead" if you're not wearing quite heavy clothing. 0 ℃ is "really cold outside" and still understating things.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

0 ℃ isn't "fairly cold outside". It's literally the definition of freezing cold.

...for water. At 1 atmosphere of pressure. Not taking into account salinity.

0 ℉ is "dead" if you're not wearing quite heavy clothing.

Lots of temperatures on both ends of the spectrum are "dead" without proper attire, regardless of what unit of measurement is used.

0 ℃ is "really cold outside" and still understating things.

I think there's a bit of a reference frame issue here.

Zero C is normal winter temperature for a lot of people. For some, it's downright balmy. If it's sunny, I won't need more than a fleece and jeans. Working outside, I'll probably ditch the sleeves after a while.

Going off of your instance, I'm guessing you're in Australia. Since I don't know where, I grabbed a large southern city (Melbourne), and looked up the record holder for coldest temperature (Charlotte Pass). All temps in Celsius:

Melbourne:

Charlotte Pass:

For comparison, here's a city near me (New York), and a random town I picked from a map in northern Minnesota (known for being cold in the winter).

New York:

Roseau:

That... is a stark difference. Where you live makes a huge impact on what feels "normal." 0 C is no big deal here. It's just "cold." Minnesota in January? "What a nice day!" That's not nonsense, it's different perspectives.

Is Fahrenheit arbitrary and outdated? Yes. Is Celsius arbitrary? Also yes. There's nothing special about the freezing and boiling points of water at 1atm. But that's the (basis behind the) current scientific standard. Is it ridiculous that the US still uses Fahrenheit? Yes. Why? I don't run the place, I just live here.

Does any of this matter in the day to day of normal people? No. Will people keep arguing about it? Absolutely.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children) 
               PSI
 0                             100
 ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
Dead                  Potentially survivable
               Vs
               Atm
 0                             100
 ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
Dead                           Dead
               Vs
               kPa
 0                             100
 ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
Dead                      Totally  Fine