this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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Science Memes

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Burning Up (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (8 children)

I present the temperature scale that I made up- the Human Scale (H°)

I thought about the Fahrenheit vs Celsius debate, and I think both have practical uses, however I think combined they could make a very practical scale.

Fahrenheit: while my American sensibilities agree that 100° is a good marker for what % of my patience is used up to cut a bitch, I think a similar place would be the average human body temperature. For this reason, 100°H = 98.6°F . It's not a perfect match, but it can still give us the satisfaction of "IT'S 100°!?" while having practical implications for medical uses "your body temperature is 102°, 2° warmer than average".

Celsius: I think this scale makes a ton of sense for colder temperatures. When the thermometer reads 0°, that's when you can expect snow. For this reason, 0°H = 0°C.

The conversation rates are:

H = (F-32) × 1.5

H= C × 2.7

More precise is

H = (F-32) × 1.501501501...

H = C × 2.7027027027...

While using the freezing point of water and the average human body temperature seem like inconsistent and arbitrary benchmarks, my goal is less about consistency and more about practicality for everyday use.

Now watch this scale grow as big as Esperanto.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I believe the Fahrenheit scale was originally set up for 100° to be human body temperature. We're just built colder now I guess? I had to look up what zero was and apparently he originally set it at the coldest the air had ever been around his village, but later had to standardize it and so cooked up some brine that froze at 0°.

I would propose that 100 should be calibrated around the wet bulb temperature, which I think is around 105°F but varies with humidity. That's the temperature where sweating doesn't cool you off any more, so any temperature 100 or more is deadly to most people. I like 0 being freezing for water, seems sensible and is also a good "prolonged exposure to this or lower will kill you" cutoff point.

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

the wet bulb temperature^1^ is just the temperature of a wet thermometer, and varies with humidity and temperature. Wet bulb temp is never higher than the dry bulb temp, so (entertainingly) you're proposing that the meaning of 100° varies wildly and is always lower than the true temperature, effectively making the air temperature always ≥100°, and increases when the air is drier, like some sort of inverse relative humidity.

^1^(I'm aware you probably didn't mean wet bulb temperature here, but let's have fun with the idea) :)

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