this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (6 children)

Guess there's not much need. Most of the prefixes used are 1000 (kilo, mega, etc.) or 1/1000 (milli, micro, etc). The tens and hundreds are a bit odd to use and imo shouldn't be used. So there's no need to use prefixes until you're into Star temperatures or really extreme experiments.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Centicelsius has a nice ring to it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

370 Centigree

That's ® worthy, fam.

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[–] [email protected] -5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

prefix

You mean suffix? Usually the C or F (or K for that matter) are denoted last, not first.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

OP means prefixes, like 1000°C = 1 k°C

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

No, they mean like "kilocelsius" or "millicelsius", which makes them prefixes

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I usually do

46°C instead of 46° ???

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I feel very dumb and American for never realizing this was a thing.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

It's really when you get into the thousands though that SI prefixes generally start to be used, you don't see deca or hecto used that often. It's mainly because we're usually happy keeping three digits of precision in general conversation (185 degrees C, 250 metres, etc). After that we get a bit sloppy and start rounding, and that's where kilo comes in and we start talking about "1.25 kilometres" and such.

Add in the fact that people rarely need to describe temperatures higher than 1000 degrees C with any precision, (they'll just round to hundreds/thousands/millions usually) and that's why SI units feel weird with temperature.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Because physics uses Kelvin for high temperatures, and electron volts for really high temperatures.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (12 children)

Would just be confusing. Temperatures above a few hundred degrees have no place in most people's daily lives, so that would be mostly for scientific notations, and scientists use Kelvin anyway for precision.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 8 months ago

Give it a few kilomonths

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I want to see this.

I'm gonna be the change I want to see.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Because kilodegrees sounds funny. But megadegrees really sounds volcano lair evil.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Megadegrees sounds like something graduates from Trump University got for finishing a retreat. They are the highest quality degrees - so good they deserve to have their own name!

Going back to temperature though, it would be odd-sounding to say the Sun can get as hot as 15 megadegrees at it's core.

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