Burning Up
Burning Up
545 comments
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Fahrenheit is best for ambient temperatures. 0 F is what humans feel is a very cold day, and 100 F is what humans feel is a very hot day.
Celsius is best for literally everything else, but for humans feeling of ambient temperature Fahrenheit is best
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only if you grow up with fahrenheit.
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100F was defined as the human body temperature (The guy they used had a cold or something so it's off by a degree and a half.)
That's useful for perception of heat. When the dry bulb gets above 100F, wind only cools you down by sweat evaporation, and when the wet bulb gets above 100F, even that can’t cool you down, and you will die if you don’t get to a cooler or drier environment.
This is more intuitive than 36.5C.
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what Fahrenheit used for his endpoints was 1) the melting point of a brine mixture that he didn't write down the ratio of, and 2) his wife's armpit.
those "bulb" things is something i only ever hear of from americans. it's never used here.
and I fail to see how two numbers are somehow differently intuitive. they are just numbers. also, 36.5 is too low. it's pretty much 37.0 now, because average body temp has interestingly enough shifted since he took those measurements.
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What does Europe use for apparent temperature measurement then? Just humidity and not evaporation?
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temperature, wind speed and direction, and humidity are given separately. regular news report style forecasts don't give humidity at all.
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What's a dry/wet bulb?
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Dry bulb is a normal temperature reading with say a thermometer. Wet bulb is that same thermometer but it is wrapped in a wet cloth to simulate evaporation of sweat.
The purpose of wet bulb temperature measurement is to fix the dangerous temperature threshold at body temperature instead of having to adjust for humidity. So if the wet bulb temperature crosses 35C/95F you know that it is dangerous to even be outside because your sweat can't even evaporate enough to prevent you from overheating just standing in the shade.
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Dry bulb is the temperature independent of humidity. Wet bulb is has a wet cloth on the thermometer bulb. This simulates how much sweat cools you in the current humidity and wind.
Measuring humidity instead and cross-referencing to get heat index is more common these days, but IMO it's worse. 120 in the desert vs 120 heat index due to humidity is the difference between someone using a hair dryer on your face and getting cooked in a steam room, and it doesn't consider wind and cloud cover.
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Wait, doesn't everybody walk around with a pocket psychrometric chart?
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So you're saying that 0 and 100 aren't intuitively obvious? I find that really strange when it's doing a better job keeping to base 10 than the metric system in this particular use case.
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the numbers may be, but if you asked me to tell you what they feel like i would have to convert them to celsius first. where i live temperatures are generally between -30 and +30, and i could tell you in an instant what I would wear for a given temperature in that range. 50F though? no clue. since it's right between 0 and 100 i guess it would be just right, temperature wise, so t-shirt and long pants?
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Can you remember that at temperatures near 0F and 100F, you need to take special precautions when going outside? The rest is a matter of getting used to what the numbers mean, but those are very intuitive danger points.
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-18 is such an arbitrary place for "special precautions". at 0, I know to start driving more carefully since the roads ice up. at -15, i know to wear long johns. at +15, i know to start using a thinner jacket. at -30, i know to use a thick hat and wax on my cheeks to prevent the blood vessels from rupturing. at +30, I know to use a large hat and sun cream on my cheeks to prevent them from burning.
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18 is such an arbitrary place for “special precautions”
cool little trick, you see how -18 is like, pretty close to -20, yeah. You can just round them. It really doesn't matter
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see, that's what i'm saying. having a scale that starts at "it really doesn't matter" makes it hard to use for everyday things.
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but it literally has numbers?
You know that celsius starts at -273.15 degrees right? That's ENTIRELY arbitrary, and by your logic, makes the system useless.
you're literally just making this up?
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no, Celsius starts at +273.15 K, because that's where an element we are all dependent on to live and in contact with every day undergoes an important phase transition.
What happens at 0°F?
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What happens at 0°F?
why does it matter? Water freezes at 32 degrees f. What happens at 32 degrees C? What happens at 212 degrees C?
Also no, it doesn't start at +273.15 K, that's not how number ranges work. If you have a list of numbers between -10 and 10. And you were to sort them, least to most, -10 would be at the bottom, obviously.
you realize that temperature is a measure of the energy within a substance/material right? It's intrinsically tried to the physics and atomic structure underlying the material substance. That always starts at the lowest temperature point, the point being where it is is just a reference
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yeah no shit, but think of it this way, if you were put into a place that was 100f, you would go "damn this bitch hot out here" and if you were put into a place that was 0f you would go "damn this joint cold as fuck fr"
Stop thinking in celsius.
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why would i stop? there's only one place in the world that uses another scale, and it's dangerous for me to even travel there.
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because we're not talking about celsius? We're talking about fahrenheit?
This is like pulling up to a car meet in a semi truck, and being really confused when nobody thinks your ride is sick.
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the parent post was literally about Fahrenheit vs Celsius.
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it was literally about fahrenheit*
Specifically, it was about how in fahrenheit we can refer to really hot temperatures as "OVER 100F"
but it was also a shitpost, like this post, so we probably shouldn't care about it this much lmao
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i am referring the the post i responded to.
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yeah, that was my post.
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What if it was 99f? Or 1f? Would your scientific "damn this bitch hot out here" change to something else?
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no? Because it's not entirely hinged around the temperature being one specific number???
Do you think the human body is a perfectly accurate thermometer?
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When it comes to a single number on a scale, whatever you grew up with will be more "obvious". 100F doesn't give me any more information than 38C does. The whole "base 10" thing only matters if you are actually doing some math to that number.
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Base 10 makes it much easier to remember.
When was the last time you did math related to temperature?
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For day to day use, it's just a single number, no one is doing any conversions, etc, with the number. That was my point. There's nothing to remember. Do you forget what 72F feels like? Do you have to scale it in your head?
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base 10 is literally just 0-9 so yeah, everyone remembers that.
scaling based on the base 10 figure makes conversions easier, so there's that.
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Kelvin is used for math pretty regularly. Rankine was too.
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100F definitely gives more insight as to the temperature. It's a 100/100. That's as hot as a person can really tolerate. If you understand percentages or how to rate things on a scale of 1-10, you understand fahrenheit.
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That's as hot as a person can really tolerate.
There's large chunks of the world proving that false every day. For the geographically impared, the simple fact that Phoenix has existed for longer than air conditioning, proves that statement false.
And 0F as the low point is equally as useless.
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fun fact about phoenix, going outside on a day that's about 100f, is not fucking pleasant they literally have air misters to help provide cooling, which barely does anything.
People are just fucking insane and will live in places like alaska where the ground is literally frozen all year round. Phoneix AZ is not "habitable", it's bearable. Also a lot of these places, especially in hotter dryer regions, will have covered sidewalks to provide shade, (at least historically) people would and still do wear large hats to block a lot of the sun. Even then a lot of people wouldn't spend a whole bunch of time outside in that heat.
also, have you seen death valley? It kills people, every fucking year.
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That's why I used the qualifier "really" and in another comment I mentioned "in average temperate climates" If you were more familiar with statistics you would understand how means and outliers work. Just like someone can score a movie an 11/10 or a -1/10, it is possible for the weather to exceed 100F or drop below 0F. Just not typical.
And while I didn't say it specifically, 0F is similarly the average lowest temperature a person can tolerate/expect before beginning to experience problems.
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Hypothermia can be a problem in temperatures as high as 50F. 0F is a meaningless number, outside of purely subjective "it's cold" uses.
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"Can be" Yeah if you're submerged in 50F water you will succumb to hypothermia due to the specific heat of water.
But we're not discussing swimming pool temperatures, we're discussing air temperatures. You are not actively in danger of imminent hypothermia at 50F air temp like you are at 0F air temp.
But of course you know that already. You're not here arguing in good faith, you just want to sling shit at people that have a better understanding of the world than you. If you want to use Celsius for everything, go ahead. No one cares. But the intelligent world will keep using both.
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But the intelligent world will keep using both.
Lol
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For Celsius, 0 is freezing cold and 100 is boiling hot - that's intuitive too.
I have literally never felt 0°F in my life and couldn't tell you how cold it is, just that it's very cold. I believe everyone has a rough understanding how 0°C and 100°C feel though.
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It is intuitive, and that's fine. Having the same intuition around human comfort zones is also fine. One measurement system can't really cover everything.
People tend not to want to live in places where it's routinely under 0F or over 100F. You'll tolerate it, but you won't like it. It's a very natural range of human comfort.
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No, they're not. I couldn't tell what those numbers mean even if you asked, but I can tell what 0°C outside feels, and what 100°C sauna feels. I can also tell that 21°C is a nice ambient temperature for chilling, and 15-20°C is ideal for most outdoor sports.
Yeah sure those are not necessarily nice round numbers, but I've used the scale all my life so it's intuitive to me, same as the Fahrentrash is intuitive to you
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No, that's not how this works.
You understand the concept of a scale. If I asked you to rate something on a scale of 1-10, you know what i mean. It has nothing to do with intuitiveness. If I asked you to rate something on a scale of 7-23, you'd know what I mean, even though the numbers are different than what you're used to.
So if I said it was 100F outside, you'd know that's very uncomfortably hot, as hot as a normal person can really tolerate, because you'd recognize it as the high end of the scale.
Everyone can understand fahrenheit, some people just try really hard not to.
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You really don't understand what reference points are. The scale is useless without reference points, and I'm not accustomed to them while I have very clear ones for Celsius.
Sure I can understand that 100F feels very hot, but if I was outside in that temperature I couldn't tell you an estimate in Fahrenheit how hot it feels
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0 and 100 aren't just "very cold" and "very hot". They are potentially dangerously so, and you need to take extra precautions at temperatures beyond those limits. You don't necessarily have to understand it beyond that.
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It is pretty funny how your supposed completely intuitive human feeling system needs to have all these disclaimers added to it whenever you try to explain it. Perhaps it is only intuitive because you are used to it after all?
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Three sentences is a lot of disclaimers to you? Really?
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The reference points are 0 and 100! You don't have to get accustomed to them, they are the same reference points used by the entire base-10 numerical system. It is a percentage.
And yes, you could step out into 100F degree heat and accurately estimate the temperature. Is it the hottest day of summer? Are you beginning to experience symptoms of heat fatigue? Are you saying to yourself "This is one of the hottest days I have ever experienced", all the same stuff you'd think if you stepped outside into 37.8C weather. Then it's probably close to the high end of the scale, i.e. 100F.
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Okay so you're making lot of weird assumptions here. I don't know how hot weather 37°C feels, other than that for me 30+ is absolute hell. I've never experienced heatwave that bad for what I remember. Hottest summer days here are just about 30°C, and it's miserable.
Reference point means that I'm able to easily understand what that temperature is.
I can easily understand 100°C though, sauna is getting too hot and I should open window and chill down with feeding the fire.
For 0-30 I can easily understand how I should dress outside, and 0°C is easy to understand because just above it and I know it's going to be wet and slippery if there was negatives before it, and below 0 is slippery if there was positives earlier.What is intuitive to you is totally a subjective experience based on your earlier experiences and what you're used to use to measure temperatures.
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Lmao your sauna is not clearing 100C, that's well past the point at which saunas can become hazardous to your health. If you genuinely run your sauna that hot then start looking into competitions because you're gonna blow all those professionals out of the water.
Also I'm not making any assumptions here. That's just you trying to grasp at straws to save your failing argument. You don't know what 37C feels like? Weird, I know what 100F feels like. I guess fahrenheit is just more intuitive than Celsius (by your logic, anyway).
Also, all you've done is list a bunch of understandings about Celsius that depend entirely on experience and prior knowledge. "Above 0 is like this, below is like that, I know how to dress for 0-30" This is all stuff you had to be taught/learn, the exact opposite of intuitive.
But I can say to someone unfamiliar with either system "Fahrenheit is a 0-100 scale of hot how it is outside" and they know almost everything they need to know about fahrenheit.
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Lmao your sauna is not clearing 100C, that's well past the point at which saunas can become hazardous to your health. If you genuinely run your sauna that hot then start looking into competitions because you're gonna blow all those professionals out of the water.
In International Sauna Championships the sauna was heated to 110°C. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Sauna_Championships?wprov=sfla1
Dry sauna at 100°C is not terribly hot feeling, but then again I don't like dry sauna. In those competitions the sauna was NOT dry, but water thrown onto the rocks every 30sec. That's actual hell to be in
Also, all you've done is list a bunch of understandings about Celsius that depend entirely on experience and prior knowledge.
Exactly. Because that is required to understand what the numbers mean. Congratulations for understanding what I said while completely missing the point
But I can say to someone unfamiliar with either system "Fahrenheit is a 0-100 scale of hot how it is outside" and they know almost everything they need to know about fahrenheit.
Fahrenheit is none of that. It requires prior knowledge and understanding where the scale lies. By your logic, 50°F should be perfectly nice ambient temperature, but in reality it's plenty cold enough for hypothermia
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What makes you think humans, an endothermic species, desires exactly 50% thermal energy? We enjoy the 70F region because we are warm blooded mammals.
"In International Sauna Championships the sauna was heated to 110°C" Yeah. And 2 people collapsed, 1 died from it. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-10912578 A 5-time champion who had excellent tolerance.
"Exactly. Because that is required to understand what the numbers mean (in celsius)"
Exactly, because fahrenheit doesn't require such a random set of arbitrary associations. Congratulations for understanding what I said while trying so hard to miss the point.Look, you can argue all you want. The fact is that both systems have their applications. I don't believe you genuinely disagree with this statement. I think you're just here because you want to sling shit at people that are different than you. Nothing you say will make Celsius better at determining ambient temperature, nothing you say will make fahrenheit better for use in a lab. Get over it.
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If you'd say it is 100F outside, I wouldn't know what you mean because I have no concept of Fahrenheit. Is 100F actually hot? What is that in Celsius? Do you mean hot as in "better to wear light clothes" or "Do not set a foot outside or you will melt"?
What does it mean "as hot as a normal person can really tolerate"? What about a abnormal person?
It gives nothing of information. Just a rough indication of what it might be. Which isn't useful at all.
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Do you understand the base-10 numerical system? Do you understand percentages? Congratulations, you understand fahrenheit. You can no longer honestly say, on the internet or otherwise, that fahrenheit is meaningless to you. You are now a fahrenheit understander, whether you like it or not.
Also, your second statement answers your first question. When I say "as hot as a normal person can tolerate" i do not mean "wear light clothes", I mean "as hot as a normal person can tolerate". Thats why i said "as hot as a normal person can tolerate". Happy to clear that up you for you.
Abnormalities/outliers are not something on which we should base standards of measurements.
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You keep saying this but it still doesn't make any sense. 50% heat would be average middle of the pack nice? And "as hot as normal person can tolerate" is full of shit because neither you or I have no concept of what "normal person can tolerate", as the normal depends on your geography. And this is quite a good reason why claiming "Fahrenheit is how human feels" is just idiotic as it relies both on a specific climate and having learned that scale growing up.
I swear you Americans can get so fucking stupid on this topic, it's like claiming that Finnish is the most intuitive language because it's the language of how love (average love, excluding outliers obviously) feels
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Lmao and there it is.
"You americans"
It was never about temperature. You just love any excuse to shit on people that are different.
God forbid a country teach the value of both systems. Your tiny mind evidently cannot comprehend the very idea of 2+ methods of measurement.
And yes, no matter how much you screech to the contrary, there is a maximum safe temperature a human can exist in, and it's roughly 100F. Yes that varies based on an individuals tolerances, which is why I've specified on many occasions that it's representative of the average climate in a temperate region. If you were capable of reading, you'd know that.
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They aren't. And fahrenheit is not a 0-100 scale. It is just the scale you picked out of it in order to make some kind of sense out of the non-intuitive system which it is.
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fahrenheit doesn't exist if you use celsius i guess??
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It doesn't, because celsius users doesn't think about fahrenheit at all.
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yeah, and it seems to me like they're the wrong ones here, because i can think about things in celsius perfectly fine without my worldview imploding, in fact i can pretty accurately estimate temperature conversions even.
Like it's great that you guys don't have to use it, but please think about it a little bit harder before saying something really goofy that can be explained easily. Or just like, shitpost.
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Um. No.
If I said a movie was a 7/10, you would understand what that means because it's a scale. You don't have to "grow up" using a 0-10 scale to understand it.
Like if I asked you to rate something on a scale of 4-17, you'd understand what I mean. The numbers are different but the concept of a scale remains the same.
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if I knew that you are a european and you told me a movie was 5/10, i would assume it was average. if i knew you were American, i would assume it was dogshit.
Americans have a weird relationship with numbers.
also, as mentioned in another post: if 0 is too cold and 100 is too hot, surely 50 would be a pleasant temperature?
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Dear god, is Fahrenheit the reason behind meaningless movie ratings? Another reason to hate it…
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"Americans" ah, I see. You don't actually care about effective systems of measurement, you just want to shit on people that are different from you.
Also, as answered in another post: Why would you assume that humans, an endothermic species, prefers exactly 50% thermal energy? Of course we sit around the 70F region, we're warm-blooded mammals. We don't want to be half cold, we want to be mostly warm.
No matter how much you complain or argue, it's never going to be true that Celsius is the one-and-only most perfect system of temperature measurement. The fact is that both systems have their applications, as any intelligent member of the scientific community would tell you.
Get over it.
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considering america is the only place that uses it, i can't really find any other factor to use.
the point of a temperature scale is to quantify temperature as to ease its communication. if one player is using a different scale that's just complicating things.
also, if its an "intuitive" scale, surely it should take human bias into account?
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Really not. Basically, you just need to peg feelings to a number, just like you are doing.
Celsius:
below -20 = deadly even with good gear, you can't spend long here
-15 = very dangerous / deadly
-10 = starting to get dangerous
-5 = starting to get uncomfortable
0 = very cold
5 = cold
10 = a little cold
15 = cool
20 = nice
25 = warm
30 = hot
35 = starting to get uncomfortable
40 = starting to get dangerous
45 = very dangerous / deadly
50+ = deadly even with good gear, you can't spend long here-
I don't think you understand what I said.
Also, that's a lot of explaining, and lots of feelings associated with arbitrary numbers. Fahrenheit doesn't need anywhere near that level of explanation. It doesn't necessitate the pegging of feelings to random numbers.
The sentence "Fahrenheit is a 0-100 scale of how hot it is outside" is all anyone needs to immediately understand and be able to use fahrenheit. I didn't need to type out a long list of what each temperature value means to me. There is no need for a mneumonic such as "10 is cold, 20s not, 30s warm, and 40s hot"
If you're doing math in a lab, absolutely use Celsius. I'm not saying it doesn't have a place. It's just not the be-all end-all most perfectest temperature measurement system ever.
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I think you are projecting your feeling onto others; I don't have "a mneumonic" in my head. That was for your benefit, since you are not immersed in that scale.
When I see the weather report and it says tomorrow it is going to be 25 degrees with light wind, I know that it will be a pleasant day. The same way I know what the reporter is saying, I have been immersed in the English language since birth, it requires no though to understand the words they are saying.
It requires no thought to understand that 25 degrees and light wind is a nice day. It just is.
I don't have that intuitive sense for the F scale, I always have to convert it to a sensible number. I know 100 is around 37, which is really hot.
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But it requires you to be familiar with an arbitrary -20 - 40 scale. Which makes way less sense than a 0-100 scale.
I don't need to use the mnemonic either, I grew up in the U.S. so I understand both systems perfectly well. But the mnemonic exists because Celsius uses an inherently less sensible scale. You only understand it internally because you grew up with it. A person who grew up with neither system would find fahrenheit easier to understand from an unbiased position because it's more logical.
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deg C is no more arbitrary than deg F; any more than French is more arbitrary than English.
It is a strange argument to say "You only understand it internally because you grew up with it."; well yes, but that is exactly the same with the deg F scale.
A person who grew up with neither system would find fahrenheit easier to understand from an unbiased position because it’s more logical.
In your opinion.
In my opinion it is far more logical to base you temperature scale on repeatable physical measurements, than say what a person feels.
0 C = water freezes
0 F =Several accounts of how he originally defined his scale exist, but the original paper suggests the lower defining point, 0 °F, was established as the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride (a salt)
100 C = water boils
100 F = best estimate for average human body temperature.The F scale is not built on logic.
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Okay yeah you're totally right Celsius is the most perfectest and wonderful system of temperature measurement and it can do everything and it's magical and perfect for every single application ever.
Sure, bud.
Also "repeatable physical measurements" I think I found your problem. You seem to think that a fahrenheit thermometer will display a different temperature each time something is measured, even if the temperature has not changed. Allow me to clarify for you: if you measure something at a constant temperature more than once with a fahrenheit thermometer, the thermometer will display the same value each time, just like Celsius. I can see how that misconception could've led to your confusion, I'm glad I could help you to understand better. Let me know if you need anything else explained to you.
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Of course the last bastion of the failed debate; ad hominem and straw man.
Have a fine day.
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Of course the last bastion of the failed debate, a poor attempt to dismiss the oppositions' arguments as logical fallacies. The only problem is you clearly have no idea what either of those logical fallacies are. Didn't even mention reductio ad absurdum.
It's ridiculous that you're actually here arguing that there's absolutely no place in modern science for the fahrenheit system of measurement. What a backwards, preposterous stance to take. Your small-mindedness will not serve you.
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It is pretty funny how you keep claiming "fahrenheit is the best system for human temperature" countless times. Celsius users then question that, though without claiming celsius is better, it is just something we are used to.
And then you get all pissy and strawman celsius users as saying the exact thing you have been claiming about fahrenheit this entire thread.
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But it requires you to be familiar with an arbitrary -20 - 40 scale. Which makes way less sense than a 0-100 scale.
Your 0-100 scale is just as arbitrary, in fact even more, since it doesn't even cover the daily temperatures huge parts of the global population lives in.
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But to understand "x out of a possible y" you have to understand scales, or at least percentages which is the same concept. Then, if you understand percentages, you understand fahrenheit.
Honestly more places should do what the U.S. does and just teach both (and Kelvin). Because ultimately there isn't one perfect system of measurement for every possible application. Celsius is of course better in lab settings, Fahrenheit is better for cooking and meteorology.
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Honestly, I thought I'd deleted that comment before you replied. I'd broken my promise to myself of never commenting in the celsius/fahrenheit threads.
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I understand. Tbh, I usually try to stay out of arguments too, but the fahrenheit debate is pretty low-stakes and kinda fun sometimes so I figured I'd jump in.
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545 comments