Spyke

i feel like this was either made by a fahrenheit user, or a nothern canadian. 0°C isn't "fairly cold", it's freezing! 10°C is "fairly cold".

2
Klearreply
quokk.au

We need a new scale where 0 is 0K and 100 is the temperature of the big bang.

24

May I suggest calling it the Morphius scale?

"The temperature will be 1 °M today"
"In the beginning it was 100 degrees Morphius"

6
lemmy.ml

Americans using the word propaganda for "something I don't understand because my school system failed me so now I overcompensate by making up factoids that make me look even more uneducated by the rest of the world"

76
PugJesusreply
piefed.social

Americans using the word propaganda for “something I don’t understand because my school system failed me so now I overcompensate by making up factoids that make me look even more uneducated by the rest of the world”

Whoosh.

2
Fmstratreply
lemmy.world

I'm geniunly curious why you are getting down voted. The "propaganda" word choice is clearly part of the joke.

I mean, I wish we used C instead of F, but this take is still a whoosh.

3
person420reply
lemmynsfw.com

I'm curious, why? I think metric makes sense in most regards but I like the granularity of F. The difference between 70F and 75F is pretty noticeable, but in C, it's like what? 1 degree?

1

Because my partner uses C. The constant jump scares from temps is annoying 😀

Separate from that, I use temps for what to wear, so exactness is less important to me. In truth AQI and humidity are much more important metrics to me.

Plus:

  • Equipment temps are always in C
  • Using C is a gateway to metric use
  • Devices built for C are just.. better. Example: Any washing machine for C has the temperatures listed on the settings vs the ever so useful "warm" or "colors"
  • Kettle boils when it hits 3 digits. More fun.

So, lots of ancillary reasons I guess, vs any one direct reason.

2
hochreply
lemmy.world

0% hot = 100% cold

so

-40% hot = 140% cold ❄️

48
adarzareply
lemmy.ca

that's when the two scales collide...

-40FC...

'fucking cold'

28
lemmy.world

I understand you're being sassy but below zero you do start saying "no but seriously, how can it be this cold?" Zero is about the lower limit before temperature stops being distinguishable and just becomes cold

-6
kadureply
scribe.disroot.org

The feeling of cold weather is entirely subjective. A Brazilian from Bahia will wear a winter coat and feel cold at 20C, but somebody from northern Canada would be going out for a swim in their shorts.

Which is why any attempt at using "oh it means cold percentage" or "oh below zero it just feels the same" is extremely dumb and a easily refutable attempt at saving a bad scale.

35

Yup. We were at an event and it was a hot weekend, mid 30’s C, sunny, so we were in shorts and staying in the shade. My sister, who had just come back from a tour in Afghanistan, was wearing a sweater and shivering.

8

I grew up in the Northeastern US. I lived in the Southeastern US for a few years. My first year there it was 65F in March and everyone was still in their winter coats with scarves and hats commenting that they couldn't wait for spring and I was in a t shirt with sweat literally rolling down my arms and face and I remember saying "wait, this isn't spring?"

5
Zootreply
reddthat.com

Point was, doesn't matter who you are or where you're from, once it gets to -40 it's "fucking cold" to literally everyone

0
lemmy.ca

There is a BIG difference between 0F, -20F and -40F. And as someone that has worked in areas that has often seen -60F, -20F feels like spring in comparison, the local Inuit wouldn’t even wear a jacket at 0F.

26

It is funny how 40 in the fall sees most folks bundling up with everything they have, and 40 the spring is shorts and sandals weather.

I don’t stop wearing shorts until it’s about 0F out or the wind is insane. Not to like shovel the driveway or anything being out for extended periods, but going out shopping or whatever is fine. Today was 0 with a -20 windchill and my Costco run was done in shorts, a sweatshirt, and a baseball cap.

9

Spoken like somebody who doesn't experience freezing degrees very often.

5
lemmy.ca

I like how they claimed Fahrenheit made sense by relating it to a scale between 0 and 100 because a grade divided into 100 pieces (centigrade) is a system that is easy to handle. If only there was a unit of measurement that was already like that.

62
Cortreply
lemmy.world

No they're relating average earth temperature/weather to a centigrade scale, instead of relating liquid water to one.

10

I might catch flak for this, but I understand Fahrenheit made a ton of sense of an illiterate bygone era (well, I guess coming back maybe)

The vast majority of people were uneducated. Decimals were a non-starter, maybe negatives were also difficult?

0-100 was very easy. Under 0? Don't go outside if possible. Over 100? Don't go outside if possible. >50/halfway? Time for a coat. Having the same scale from -15 to 40 might have been confusing and not centered for them?

2
lemmy.world

How is freezing cold, 32% hot? What am I missing here?

55
offspecreply
lemmy.world

Because I can still walk to the mailbox in shorts at 32

27
Honytawkreply
feddit.nl

You could still do that at -10% hot, so I don't get your argument.

2

Yeah but I can't be -10% naked, at 0°f I'm 0% naked, I have on all the layers that I could possibly layer. At 100°F I want to be 100% naked, minimal clothing socially required because it's hot outside. My outfit might change from 90 to 100, but after 100 I'm capped out on what I can remove before I need to either move to a place that allows public nudity or just resolve myself to public indecency charges. At 32°F I can still run out to the mailbox in shorts and a hoodie, that's not 0% naked that's frankly still a long ways away from fully clothed.

1
lemmy.ca

You guys are too ignorant to see how full of shit OP is.

50F is not 50% hot, it's cold. If your house was 50F you'd be saying "something is wrong with my HVAC". You'd never heat to only 50, and you'd never cool that far. It's cellar temperature (colder than a wine cellar, warmer than a root cellar).

70F is 50% hot. It's a temp you'd cool to in the summer, and a temp you'd heat to in the winter.

100F isn't 100% hot either, most people enjoy a hottub to be a little hotter.

Tldr: OP is wrong

41

50 degrees feels pretty fucking warm when i get out of the below zero walk in

8

50°F is when I might start wearing pants instead if shorts. I will still be wearing a t-shirt, and won't bring a jacket until at least 40°F.

70°F is the hottest it can be outside before I become uncomfortably warm.

When I get in a hot tub that is at 100°F, I will turn it down to at least 95°F and know that I won't be able to stay much longer.

This is the other problem with Fahrenheit, there is no universal "100% hot". While Celsius doesn't have the granularity and is subject to "just ask water how it feels" criticism, at least "what temperature is water" is a consistent way to explain it as opposed to saying "at 100°, you'll be hot"

1

You clown, hot has been defined as 100°F since 1724. Therefore 50°F = 50% hot.

0
jj4211reply
lemmy.world

I suppose the takeaway is once the weather is 100 or higher, I don't care it's just too damn hot.

After being in 115 degree heat, 100 degree heat still feels just terrible.

Similarly below zero, subjectively I didn't need specifics anymore. I know that salting ice outside is probably not going to work anymore. Yes it does make a difference, but comfort wise I just hate it either way.

So I can see, mostly joking but a grain of truth that you have "stupidly cold" then 0 to 100 scale of usual air temperature then "too damn hot".

It's like the only way the farenheight scale is kind of appealing from a "humans like 0 to 100 scale", but it's mathematically painful and nonsense apart from comfortable human temperatures.

1

I'm one of those people who knows we should standardize, bit also finds Fahrenheit just very convenient.

Like, when people say it's 50 out, I immediately know that it's going to feel about halfway between what I know 0 and 100 feel like. No one can even put up the pretext of doing that with Celsius, because not even the most pedantic person ever bothers to tell you when it's 100 c out.

In seriousness though, the Fahrenheit scale isn't non-sense, it's just addressing things we don't much need help with anymore. The zero point was chosen as a temperature you can create reliably without particularly sophisticated tools, and the range is so freezing and boiling are 180 degrees apart, putting them on the opposite sides of a dial.

1
PhoenixDogreply
lemmy.world

It is kind of nice waking up, having a bad day or something, but then I'm reminded "At least I'm not that fucking stupid.

5
lemmy.ml

I worked retail for a decade. There is no bottom to the barrel. There are people driving around in cars who genuinely shouldn't be left unsupervised with metal utensils.

4
lemmy.world

i tell them i use a 100 hour clock. Day starts at 0 at ends at 100. They see how much better it is and they have an existential crisis. And then everyone clapped

37

Fuuuuck. That's the coolest thing I seen all day! I'm in. On .beat time now!

4

I loved it for removing the messy timezones.

I learned with that a lot of other problems are created, hehe.

2

Honestly it's not the worst idea, the french have tried something like that during one of their revolutions.

Semi-relatedly, I'm salty they didn't push for duodecimal numbers and base metric on that, it would incorporate the only good part of imperial system & 12-based time system, not only into measurements but also all other aspects of life.

Then they could make time more consistent too, maybe have like 10000 (20736 in decimal) "metric seconds" in a day (which would mean 1 "metric second" ≈ 4 "normal" seconds) and derive stuff from there (e.g. 100 "metric seconds" in a "metric minute", 10 "metric minutes" in a "metric hour", 10 "metric hours" in a "metric day"). Would be really quite neat.

2
lemmy.world

Celsius is the perfect system to describe how hot or cold it is, assuming you're a water molecule.

37
autriyoreply
feddit.org

Most people die from heat way before water starts to boil though. And we also don't freeze solid at 0°C, although it is pretty cold, I'd say that end fits slightly better.

-1

Unlike water, humans tend to feel temperature differently.

So it is unreliable to use as a base for anything that requires precision and especially science.

And it would be pretty dumb to have a completely different system just for every day life.

8
lauhareply
lemmy.world

37 isn't really hot yet. It's warm. It's around 50 degrees when it starts feeling too hot to touch.

7
sh.itjust.works

37 isn't really hot yet.

Tell me how you feel when your body heats up just a bit, from 37 to 40. Sweating? Shivering? Hot and cold waves?

As always, it depends on the context and on the individual

3

You should also ask them how they feel when their body cools down ‘a bit’ to 32°C

2

Exactly my point. Fahrenheit is very relative like that. Kelvin is absolute.

1
lemmy.world

Boiling isn't the way to do it, roasting will bring out the flavor much more nicely.

12
sopuli.xyz

I love your username. Not bad cooking advice too. Add some garlic and tomatoes and you have an excellent dish.

5
LapGoatreply
pawb.social

normal bodies are generally full of normal water i think

6
Schadrachreply
lemmy.sdf.org

Yeah, but it's mixed with other stuff which impacts the boiling point.

5
discuss.tchncs.de

To offset that, make them drunk. Drunk people boil at lower temperatures than sober ones.

4
slrpnk.net

Depends on what altitude you're at; get high enough and the depressurisation will boil the water in your blood straight out of every orofice available using only your body's latent heat.

3
slrpnk.net

All it takes is either a multi million dollar human scale pressure chamber, or volunteering for some mad billionaires high altitude mach 5 manned vehicle tests

2
ricecakereply
sh.itjust.works

Or, hear me out: a bathtub, some shrinkwrap, a bicycle pump and so e good old fashioned grit and determination.

2
slrpnk.net

Unless you could get an acrylic plate wth a seal around the edge to go over the bath, got the bike pump working in reverse and reinforced the bath, you might stuggle even with some proper elbow grease

1

So you get in the bathtub with the bike pump and have the hose connected to a nozzle going out. You might need something stronger that shrinkwrap depending on what you get, but your bathtub is invariably able to handle 1 atmosphere of pressure.

1
sopuli.xyz

Squeaky mini this and the, such Fuck me for mentioning Greenland. And all the icy

Love Greenland

1
lemmy.today

Is if they say you have room temperature IQ, it's not so bad unless you are European.

4
AxExRxreply
lemmy.world

In IQ of 70 is considered the threshold for mentally disability. (Lowest 2% of population)

3
lemmy.ca

-40 to 40 is acceptable human range.

Above or below that and you're stuck inside.

2

also 50C is roughly as hot as it gets on earth, and 0 is when things freeze (icy roads, snow, many things change) so even “round human temperature range” is a bullshit argument… 0C is much more useful for human temperature than 0F

4
sh.itjust.works

100% hot by what understanding? If I set my oven to 100F, the peak of heat by this memes reckoning, that roast chicken is going to kill my family.

If I run a warm bath at 50F, the medium-est of heats, My testicles are going to implode faster than a billionaire in a homemade submarine when they touch the water.

If we are talking human comfort, then 50F is also way too cold to be considered “50% hot”.

21
sh.itjust.works

Ugh, I'm one of those people who will defend imperial as not being irrational, just built ad-hoc for purposes that aren't in alignment with modern ones and ... No, that's not what Fahrenheit is.

Fahrenheit was trying to make a temperature scale that was easy to recreate to ease the calibration of thermometers. Zero is a temperature that can be created in your garage with some ice, salt and water. 100 was his best, ultimately inaccurate, attempt to measure human body temperature, since it's another easy calibration point, and from there water was defined as 32 and 212 so that they were 180 degrees apart, which would fit will on a temperature dial.
Not irrational, not a comfort scale, and not in alignment with current needs.

It's pure coincidence that it kinda lines up with comfortable outdoor temperatures in the opinion of a good chunk of a population living in the northern part of the western hemisphere.

21
Swedneckreply
discuss.tchncs.de

i've never understood how people imagine an easier scale to calibrate than celsius, what is easier than freezing and boiling water??

Human body temperature isn't an easy calibration point, are you gonna shove it up your ass to calibrate it, or what?

1

Well, first off he wasn't actually doing it after Celsius existed as a temperature scale. He made it a solid 18 years beforehand.
Second, there are some issues. Specifically, ice freezes at 0, but it doesn't stop getting colder. So if you have a bit of ice, that doesn't tell you the temperature, just that it's below a threshold. Boiling is more convenient because liquid water can't get above 100, but you do have to consider side pressure.
Fahrenheit used brine because as it freezes it forces salt out of the ice, making it more resistant to freezing. It self stabilizes its temperature, which is immensely handy.

None of the people designing their scales envisioned that using the basic reference points for common calibration would be a thing. Just like how we don't calibrate them with brine, ice, steam or butts today, instead relying on how we marked down how electrical resistance changes as a function of temperature and then calibrated reference numbers to get the scale right.

It's important to remember that the people in the past were largely not stupid, they simply hadn't found out something we take for granted or they had priorities that we don't.

1

Yeah we know it's a coincidence. That's kinda a part of the joke. No need to flex your knowledge here Mr smarty pants

-2
lemmy.ca

Ummm... doesn't this description actually fit better with celsius? 0% hot is frozen. 100% hot is boiling. No?

17
Kacarottreply
aussie.zone

But is it ever 100% hot outside? No matter how hot it feels, it can always get hotter.

15
gustofwindreply
lemmy.world

It can’t really get much beyond 110 outside and if it does i don’t think you’d notice the difference much

1

There have been records of the weather being 56°C (134°F) outside.

Why would being able to notice the difference matter?

1
lemmy.ca

Never. Which is why it's never 100% hot. At most it's maybe 40% hot.

2
gustofwindreply
lemmy.world

That’s why Fahrenheit is good for outdoor temps only humans care about and Celsius is good for everything else

-8
Grailreply

You mean it's good for outdoor temps only Americans care about. Here in the rest of the world, we have very different weather to you people, so we need a wider scale.

10

America has some of the lowest and highest temps in the world so I’m not sure how that means anything

1

I care a lot about when water freezes though. Ice, snow

1

There is no absolute limit, the only limit is absolute zero.

I guess we're about to fins out that 100% hot might mean something different every year, thanks to the climate warming.

1
lemmy.world

It's 212 % of the hot, how else can there be more hot than all the hot? It's gotta be all the hot from at least the next couple of rooms, might be everywhere, depends on how much hot is hogged by the oven I'd wager.

3

Ummmm? Well technically you can describe celsius as 0 being 0% boiling and 100 being 100% boiling with water. And it actually works pretty well because the hotter it is, the more it evaporates. Tho pretty sure its not linear and also thats a stupid way of saying it anyways.

16
slrpnk.net

I'm in Finland. I sometimes say stuff like "oh it's -30°C today. It's getting just a little bit nippy."

A friend of mine in California is like "Jesus Christ what are you talking about" and yes, he can convert that

14

You must be far north I live in the middle of Sweden, haven't seen temperatures like that in years.

3

This is a really bad representation lmao, you're giving an example of Finland in like mid winter comparing it to the reaction of someone who literally never sees winter. My state has had around -30°c for the last 2 weeks, been chilling, I've definitely preferred when it's been getting closer to -20 to -10 which has been funny, actually enjoying temperatures under freezing, but I don't get what your comments trying to say. It's not like Finland is that temperature all year lol, the climate of my city is surprisingly similar to a lot of Finland and I gotta say being in the cold still sucks.

1

Just in case because this is the internet at the end of the day. Fahrenheit is not linked to a percentage of anything. It's mostly arbitrary in terms of assigning a number scale to temperature and it's linked to brine solutions and human body temperature.

14
programming.dev

We need to collectively realize that both Celsius and Fahrenheit are mostly arbitrary and not more than practical conventions to assign numbers to temperatures. Kelvin makes more sense but is impractical for daily use. It's just US-Americans distracting from the fact that most of their units are objectively bad compared to Metric by pointing out that Celsius is only marginally better.

14
ptureply
sopuli.xyz

If only there was a way to tie Kelvin to some naturally occurring, everyday phenomena

15

To be fair, it's the other way around. Kelvin scale is Celsius scale shifted by -273 ℃.

1
lemmy.world

Kelvin is the most logical. That's why I measure all time by seconds since January 1, 1970

9

Can you prove anything existed before that date ?

1

Of the two, Celsius is less arbitrary because it is based on actual measurable reproducible things and not "we threw in some salts in water, and guesstimated a human body temperature". It also makes a lot of sense in our post-industrial society because we do/don't want to freeze/boil water almost every day for a variety of uses. Water is both an extremely important substance for humans and its freezing/boiling points occur in everyday life (unlike air or metals).

8
Starskireply
lemmy.zip

No, it's just in response to the countless number of non Americans who constantly insult Americans because we have a slightly different measurement system that doesn't affect the insulter in the slightest. It doesn't help that anyone in the sciences in America do know metric, like fully, no one has a problem using it here and I know plenty of people even outside of the sciences that know enough metric to get by fine, you guys really need to get over your strange obsession with our measurement system.

0

I write fiction and use Celsius. So what I usually have to deal with is the exact opposite of what you’re talking about.

2

I don’t disagree that people venting about F can get overzealous. I still think there’s a significant improvement with C though. Not saying it’ll make American scientists better, I believe you that they do fine with it. But that’s also contingent on the rest of the units being imperial.

I often see conversion constants with the unit conversion baked into them, so you lose info on what was the empirically derived constant and what’s just there to allow you to multiply temperature in F against other thermo quantities that rely on relation back to Kelvin.

2
Starskireply
lemmy.zip

Oh no, I guess my one spelling error means my entire point now means nothing, oh dang

1

That fear is them realizing they are trapped talking to a clown who proudly is grinding 100 hours at work every week.

13
lemmus.org

I mean, he's not wrong. Celsius is about how hot water is. As someone who has lived half my life on each continent and uses Celsius for everything, I do still think that Fahrenheit is a better unit to use for weather (except 0 not being freezing) while Celsius is better for everything else. But using 2 units is dumb so Celsius it is.

13
lemmy.world

Fahrenheit is about how hot water is, and how cold brine is, and how 180 is highly factorable. Celsius is about how hot water is and how 100 is nice in base 10.

32

They are indeed very wrong. Their percentage is gauged for a very specific climate, and is entirely subjective. You may personally and subjectively think it suits you, but it is not objectively a better unit to use for weather in the slightest. It would make no sense where I live for example.

6
feddit.dk

In that case, you should change the scale to match how hot/cold it actually gets outside. In many parts of the world, and even in North America, it regularly goes below 0F or above 100F.

"How hot it feels" is highly subjective. I would absolutely melt at 100F but feel fine at 0F, and nothing feels colder than those rainy windy days when it's 5C outside.

12
ouRKaoSreply
lemmy.today

Going above/below the scale just means that the weather is too hot/cold to do anything.

5

I do outdoors stuff even when it's -20C but find it difficult to get anything done at 25C, never mind 37C.

2
lemmy.zip

but feel fine at 0F

Granted electricity is more complicated than a coat, but you absolutely need tools to feel "fine" at either temperature. Humans don't survive at 0F without fire or clothes, whereas 100F just needs a water supply. In the modern world this translates to a shelter with heating vs AC

4
feddit.dk

Yes, I wear clothes to feel fine at 0F, and I also need to wear clothes to feel fine at 50F. 85F is unbearable, and I would seriously consider moving north, if it regularly got that hot where I live.

1
RBWellsreply
lemmy.world

Wow people are so different. I grew up in Florida, without air conditioning until I was 25. 85F is so nice outside in the shade, and 80 in the sun is fine for working outdoors. In the shade, with a fan going, and something to drink, I am comfortable to mid-90s at least, just not moving so much, relaxing. Hot yoga at 103 is sweaty but not dangerous for me.

There are not enough clothes in the world to make me comfortable at 0 F, there is not gear for that, I don't generate that much internal heat.

2

yeah, it's kinda funny. comfortable begins at... 65? ends at 90. Then it's Hat Season!tm and i can get another 15 degrees of comfort before appropriate clothes and good water bottles aren't enough. On the other end, 65 begins layering weather, 40s bring sweater weather and scarf weather, and the 30s end comfortable with clothing. I could probably go lower, but you can't get that kind of clothing here.

i guess my point is humans are remarkably adaptable creatures. also, at 0F you can bring coffee. you don't gotta rely entirely on yourself.

2

Yeah, it really depends on who you are and what you're used to. I can even tell that I have gotten slightly better at handling hot weather, after we have started feeling the effects of climate change, and our summers have gotten warmer.

Here in Denmark we generally have very mild weather, but it is definitely on the cooler side. Half of the year it is between 0-15C and raining, and if you spend a lot of time outdoors the moisture will slowly start to seep through your clothes, especially if you're like me, too lazy to put on a proper waterproof layer. Compared to that, proper snow and frost is great. It's bright and pretty, there's almost no moisture in the air and there's a bunch of fun stuff you can do.

2
lemmy.world

Hot take: the best temperature scale would have 0º be water freeze point and 100º be human body temp. Fahrenheit is already supposed to be that but nobody gives a shit about a saline solution freeze point and they fucked up the human body temp.

12
Luccusreply
feddit.org

I propose the body temperature of an average opossum as the fixed point for 100 because they are cute as heck. We shall call this unit Possigrade. And anything above 100 Possigrade should be called the 'rabies zone' and 0 Possigrade should correspond to 8°C, as this feels very cold when dressed inappropriately. In addition, there is now the Bakers Possigrade, where 100 corresponds to 27°C, as this is the temperature at which sourdough bread rises by about ⅓ in 5.5 hours.

But seriously: Celsius is fine. On Earth, we are primarily interested in water at atmospheric pressure. Too many things contain water (pipes, food, paint, etc) and they react differently at 0 °C than at 4 °C. For this reason, we deliberately avoid using water in applications that are regularly exposed to sub-zero temperatures. Water is simply everywhere, so 0 °C and 100 °C are important tipping points for general use.

12
Holytimesreply
sh.itjust.works

Iv always found Celsius makes way better sense for material tempature and Fahrenheit for the weather.

Celsius is no where near granular enough for the weather not by a fucking long shot.

I rather use the arbitrary jacket scale and shorts scale then Celsius for weather.

Is it jacket weather or shorts weather are the only two criteria. And it varies person to person and has zero ability to be translated between people. Yet everyone understands it natively and intuitively anyways.

1

Celcius is plenty of granular enough for science, why should it not be granular enough for something basic as the weather?

You do know that decimals exist, right?

5
sticklyreply
lemmy.world

Celsius is great for engineering because Things Happen™️ when water starts boiling or freezing. But most people aren't engineering daily. Cooking temps generally dont require much precision and there are too many niche break points to easily factor: safe meat temps, refrigeration temps, oil smoke points, Maillard reaction, etc... Our chefs are basically screwed no matter what.

That leaves measuring weather as the most universal daily application. Celsius is not great because the temp outside your door is going to be between mid -20º and mid 40º. It's nice to have water freezing at 0º (snow, frost, ice) but thats the only interesting break point. You could just as easily set 100º to be the temperature of the sun and have the same daily experience.

Humans are endothermic, which means being somewhere hotter than us is Not Good™️. That would be very nice to set as a breaking point for weather purposes, but unfortunately the danger varies wildly with humidity/airflow/personal tempature regulation/hydration/etc... If we set the triple digit break to indicate an unsafe body temp then we at least can approximate the danger and get a little bonus medical utility.

Mean body temp varies slightly based on several factors:

So set 100º to be one standard deviation over and its perfect for daily use. Checkmate Celciusts

0
feddit.org

Celsius is great for engineering because Things Happen™️ when water starts boiling or freezing. But most people aren't engineering daily.

I'd argue that it's more covenient to use a common scale for all applications of the same measurement than to have multiple different scales, just because that would eliminate all conversion concerns. Someone I know is in engineering school has switched entirely to using °C simply because that's what they deal with at school anyway, to the point they don't even write °C anymore in casual chats.

For other applications, it seems like the scales we're used to are more or less arbitrary anyway, so that's really just a matter of getting used to it. Some are used to calling ~70°F room temperature, others say ~20°C,

So if it matters for one case, but not so much for others, and we were to pick a single scale, I should think it would be ideal to go with the case where it does matter.

Or we just keep doing this thing where people use what they're used to and we just quickly look it up or someone comments with the conversion and move on with our lives.

6
sticklyreply
lemmy.world

I'll agree to a single universal scale but only on the condition that -100º=0ºK

2
slrpnk.net

K doesn't use the ° symbol ;)

And the increments of kelvin are the same as Celsius, they're just at different points, where at 0K absolutely nothing is a gas or a liquid.

(Trying to decipher it right but you're suggesting 0K be renamed -100°??

2

My bad, don't use Kelvin all that often 😂

Just joking around, but setting a scale is just a matter of fixing zero and choosing the size of your degree. So -50º would be halfway to absolute zero and 0º can be any reference point you want.

1

Perrsonally I set 100° Egg (or 100°E) to equal 180°F because that's how much i want to heat my egg when i am making ice cream. Gets you a good, custardy base for your ice cream machine.

I would also accept °Icecreams or °Is as the units

zero would be 20°F because that is Ice Cream's proper storage temperature.

edit: yeah i think we're going with °Is

4

Give one reason why we should use a different system for daily life when we already have a great system for engineering.

You are just making things more complex just to support a system you learned when you were a child when it is completely unnecessary.

3
Dasusreply
lemmy.world

Humans are endothermic, which means being somewhere hotter than us is Not Good™️.

Endothermic refers to the ability of the organism to regulate it's temperature, not just the ability to generate heat, but also to cool itself down. We humans are so good at it, that we can literally just jog prey down in hot environments and pretty much all animals will overheat before we do.

Hell, in my apartment there's a room especially for making it very hot and humid. Even above 100c, and I still don't boil. Weird, huh?

cooking temps generally don't require much prevision

Alright. Sure. Yeah. Why not. /s

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sticklyreply
lemmy.world

Hell, in my apartment there's a room especially for making it very hot and humid. Even above 100c, and I still don't boil. Weird, huh?

And I bet that room has its own thermostat, fuel, and doesn't reach that temperature without human input. How often is the average human stepping into a sauna that it needs to be considered on a common use scale? The hottest recorded temperature on earth is 56°C, why would our daily scale need to be pegged 78% higher than that?

Endothermic refers to the ability of the organism to regulate it's temperature, not just the ability to generate heat

Exactly! So we have 8.3 billion self-adjusting thermostats set to [nearly] the same target no matter their environment. Unlike the freezing temp, water's boiling point can vary wildly on Earth. If I forget to check the altitude I could mistakenly think my boiling teapot is at 100°C instead of 68°C.

Home cooking usually depends way more on your ingredients and the quirks of your appliances than your target temp. Maybe your kitchen is a little more humid today and this batch of cookies is more chewy than yesterday. That's why many recipes give hints on target texture or look (crispy, soft, golden brown...). But yes if you want a very specific outcome you'll care much more about temp accuracy.

1
Dasusreply
lemmy.world

And I bet that room has its own thermostat, fuel, and doesn't reach that temperature without human input.

I don't manage to see your point. If the point is "you can't live in places which are hotter the average body temp", then should I point you towards Australasia? Also, in my last apartment, I didn't have a sauna, but I did have a kitchen that was constantly above 40 and topped out my 52c meter in my kitchen.

considered on a common use scale?

Only an American things measuring things in average horse blood temperature vs when water boils at sealevel is a "common use scale".

A "common" use scale for you less metrically abled; "fucking freezing", "freezing", "cold", "cool", "okay", "a bit warm" "too hot" "fucking scorching".

The hottest recorded temperature on earth is 56°C

You mean the hottest ambient temperature measured not from direct sunlight. Yeah, maybe. Still a bit more than our body temp, no?

water's boiling point can vary wildly on Earth.

Yeah, but 100c doesn't. It's always the temperature at which pure water boils at sea level.

If I forget to check the altitude I could mistakenly think my boiling teapot is at 100°C instead of 68°C.

Sure yeah, you sound like a guy who might have a problem like that. Luckily for you, kettles don't actually have thermostats set to 100c. They shut off when the water is boiling, despite the temperature. So people like you have been accounted for, rest assured. Nor will you be needing to make any thermometers either.

quirks of your appliances

So you microwave shit and then think temp doesn't matter? I don't really "appliances". Is a grater an appliance? A manual one? Knives a few pans, ingredients. Thermometer. Perhaps if you've actually been doing a dish for 20 years perfectly you can forget about but it but it's an absolute must for most kitchen professionals; good measuring instruments. A scale and a thermometer, mainly. Don't really need anything else. Don't even need that to cook, obviously. But because of the "quirks of your appliance", you probe your meat, to meet the right temp. Damn I made myself hungry. Well I got some moose in the freezer.

That's why many recipes give hints on target texture or look (crispy, soft, golden brown...). But yes if you want a very specific

What's way more important in cooking is actually the measuring than thinking you can just throw it together and wait until it turns whatever the description wants. If you want it good, you'll measure it to the gram and use the correct temp. Which is a bit above our body temp again, but guess "cooking" isn't included in "common use scale"?

1
sticklyreply
lemmy.world

☝️😬 Metric-stans when you suggest a theoretical tweak to Centigrade that makes it align closer with human-scale temps while preserving the decimal nature.

My main point is that we spend 90% of our lives wandering around in a fairly narrow range of temperatures. Every day we care about how we should dress or what precipitation to expect or what the high/low might be overnight or checking our apartment thermostat...

The general population only spends a fraction of that time caring about the temperature of anything else (look at a recipe->plug in the baking temp->move on). In a universe where we spent all our time measuring astrological bodies I would probably be arguing for the scale to be normalized around 100ºSol.

I boil water probably 2x per day and I have never once cared about the actual temperature of that reaction. If I dunk my hand in water at 85ºC or 99ºC its gonna hurt like fuck either way. A scale based around horse blood would probably be more tangible because I can actually tell when the mammal blood in my meat-sack body is feeling a few degrees cold/warm.

Stapling a scale solely to pure, scientific, idealized, elemental reactions is silly Enlightenment dogma. Unless we plan on using my theoretical scale for millions of years of human evolution, average body temp is nearly as constant.

0

closer with human-scale temps

So you just never cook anything? Because if you cook, your scale is longer. You have to heat your oven to 350+ degrees, whereas I'm just putting it to 180. So the scale is actually "aligned closer with human-scale temps" whatever your brainfart can be interpreted to mean.

we spend 90% of our lives wandering around in a fairly narrow range of temperatures

You do. You. Just like you think your brainfart is in anyway an improvement instead of just silly rambling without any sense whatsoever.

I have never once cared about the actual temperature of that reaction

Because you don't live in Peru or the bottom of the sea, so you don't have to, because you know it's always pretty much exactly 100 for you.

A person with a stroke could've written your comment and it would be none the better.

Not one of your arguments holds any water; Centrigrade is a smaller scale, and a more logical one. Standing naked outside, most people would have a fairly good guess on when it's near or below 0c. Or as English actually says "freezing." You couldn't even tell 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Literally most people in the world have never even experienced such a temperature. I have. I've also experienced -40 (where they meet.)

How many days a year do you spend in 0f?

Because in my country being below zero is more common than not. Both C and F, moreso C though, as "it's closer to a human scale".

So F is wider, cooking temps are double that of anything in double digits, no-one can even tell where 0f is and 100f is very much not close to the warmest things we handle in our daily lives.

0-100c is quite simple. Over or under, don't touch with bare skin. (For non cooks stay below 60c though or you'll burn yourself)

But I don't need to argue. The works decided long ago.

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xeekeireply
lemmy.zip

0 °F is pretty close to the freezing point of salt water. So close I always wonder if that "saline solution" was just salt and water.

3
discuss.tchncs.de

We do not know because Fahrenheit didn't document it, and i wouldn't be surprised if he didn't keep track of it through his test runs either. He didn't say which salt and how much of it in how much water, no purity indication, no nothing. He was a craftsman, not a chemist and made the scale to sell his, I concede, at the time superior thermometers. He basically vibe coded a scale in the 1700s.

But that's all just hogwash, Fahrenheit today is literally defined through Celsius, so the US uses a metric scale but with a factor and an offset they pulled out of their ass to make it more rollercoaster like the rest of the units they like. The same as pretty much every unit they use: inch is defined through meters, pound via kilogram, just butchered for the vibes of yore. Good for them.

4

Fahrenheit today is literally defined through Celsius

The same as pretty much every unit they use

At this point, that's basically every unit other than the seven fundamental units. Degrees Celsius is defined from the fundamental unit Kelvin.

Plus the actual definitions of those fundamental units were defined based on historical measurements tied to former definitions. Today the second is defined around the frequency of the cesium-133 atom, but it was traditionally measured as 1/(60 x 60 x 24) of the time of a single rotation of the earth, which stopped serving us when we realized the rotations had too much variation between days. The meter is currently defined around the speed of light and the second, but was previously defined in terms of what they thought the Earth's circumference was, and then a metal bar they kept in Paris, then based on the wavelength of light emitted from a transition in krypton-86. Same with the kilogram, currently kept at Planck's constant but previously based on a particular chunk of metal that was mysteriously losing mass over time, and before that defined from the density of 4°C water and the definition of the meter.

Conventions are important. The history of how we got to particular conventions can often be messy.

2
Knightfoxreply
lemmy.world

Shh, the non-American's believe the US doesn't understand metric at all and if you tell them otherwise they won't be able to circle jerk.

1
Honytawkreply
feddit.nl

If Americans actually understood metric, they wouldn't be using a completely different system from the rest of the world in every media they produce.

Or do you think the rest of the world haven't discovered your archaic system of temperature yet?

2

The same reason why the British still use miles and stone. For some other archaic units still commonly used see horsepower, nautical mile, BTUs, acres, shots (volume), and knots (speed).

Most people use the units they grew up with or use every day as their primary colloquial units. If you grew up using inch, foot, or yard, and enough people around you can also use the unit, it doesn't change anything in your day to day to continue to use them. It also doesn't make sense to change what you use and already know if that is also what the people around you use and already know.

That said, Americans do know metric units and many use them every day, they just don't typically use them when talking to other Americans. If the basis of your argument is US produced media then it just goes to show you don't really know anything about everyday US culture. Also, why would US media, made for a US audience, with US characters use a unit that most Americans don't colloquially use?

Complaining about US media containing Imperial Units is like if I watch a Spanish movie and complain about people speaking Spanish instead of English.

1

i mean, we aren't pure water we're saline water. so we kinda should care about saline freeze point.

1

I think I see what you’re getting at, but you could just memorize 40, 35, or even 30 as “watch out, pretty close to human body temperature”. Three anchors in the scale beats two.

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lemmy.world

Get your ass outside at 0ºC and I guarantee you it's 0% hot.

12

Yeah, it was 7F when I walked the kids to school this morning. 0C would've felt like a nice spring afternoon.

9
sh.itjust.works

The stupidest thing about this that I always go on about is that they're saying the better scale is the one that goes from 0 to 100. i.e. metric. So why not use that for other measurements?

8

The only temperature system that isn't arbitrary would tell you how spreadable butter is. Zero degrees butter is utterly not spreadable while 100 degrees butter is the maximum spreadability it could achieve before melting.

7

And if you only ever used it for describing weather, that would be an argument to make. But you use it everywhere, I mean just search for the term "cooking temperature" on Google images and you'll see a bunch of nonsense.

But even using it just for weather, this is still not a good argument, as the perspective of hot and cold is very very subjective, and changes constantly. To me, an outside temperature if 10C feels freezing cold in September, but it's reasonably warm in January. Or an inside temperature of 24C will feel amazingly cold on a 42C July day, but super warm on a -10C December night.

7

I mean you could still do “Feels Like” with a humidity fudge factor in F.

2
lemmus.org

This scale presumes the non-existence of the state of "supa hot".

6

100% hot would leave the measured medium superheated and possibly fissioned… so a measurement scale more extreme then kelvin

2

It's like the difference between being in the blast radius of a fission bomb vs a hydrogen bomb. Does the size of the blast really matter glfrom ground zero?

When it's 100 degrees outside, I avoid the outside as much as possible. If it's 120 degrees outside, I avoid the outside as much as possible.

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lemmy.world

I would prefer Celsius if it was smaller degrees, so 0 = freezing is great logic but boiling needs to be 1000 not 100. There just aren't enough degrees between freezing and boiling, Celsius is too inexact.

And no way is 50 medium in F, it is cold. We might actually put the heater that low because the HVAC system we have is built more for cooling, but that is very, very cold feeling. 0 in F is beyond cold, that is 32 degrees (or 18 of your civilized degrees) below freezing. Hellish cold.

2
Dozzi92reply
lemmy.world

I don't want to mess around with punctuation. It's the same with height. Six foot? Great! 1.91 meters? What even is that!

Let's remember where we are here everyone.

2

Are you 0.00113636 miles tall though? We use centimeters for height. You are 191cm tall, not 1,91m.

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Leomasreply
lemmy.world

Now I'm not sure, if you realize that my reply was also a shitpost.

2
RBWellsreply
lemmy.world

I have never heard the temperature expressed with decimals - my phone says "it's 14, today's high will be 20 and low of 4" or whatever. Do oven settings have decimals in places that use Celsius?

Is the temperature expressed beyond whole numbers?

0

What a weird argument. There is no practical difference between 180°C and 180,5°C. No need for ovens to have decimal precision.

Thermostats do have increments lower than 1°C though. My car's AC increments in 0,5°C steps.

6

Car heating can be adjusted to decimals usually. So can the heating in my home. The oven can't, because the chicken doesn't care if it's 180 or 181 degrees.

3

These threads always make me laugh. Maybe because of the way/where I was raised I really don't care at all what anyone uses.

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lemmy.world

Posting your message wouldn't be able without standardization, even the language you are typing is a standardization. Anyway i envy your simple world

2

You, and I, typing this, in a thread about non-standardization certainly blows a hole or two in your simple thinking. It's weird to think of flexible thinking as simple. I would say I envy your rigid comprehension, but I don't. It would be awful to be lost when someone says N Celsius instead of N Fahrenheit or vise versa. What a miserable, difficult way to try to make it through life.

1

Except 100F is the temperature of a horse, so does that mean you find horses to move maximally hot?

0
lemmy.world

I read somewhere that 0F is roughly the freezing temperature of sea water where 0C is the freezing temperature of fresh water. As England is an island I see the value in the freezing temperature of sea water at the time.

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Demereply
sopuli.xyz

Sea water varies in its salt concentration a lot. And no seawater has ever been recorded below a temperature of 27.3°F (-2.6°C). Fahrenhreit used his own concontion of high concentration brine.

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Hawkereply
lemmy.world

You know you can break those units into smaller units right?

Also most thermometers are only accurate to about +/- 2 degrees F anyway.

14

I know Americans are born with a fear of decimals. But that is not a phobia the rest of the world partakes in. With decimals there is an infinite amount of unit of measurement between freezing and boiling point of water, which according to your system makes celsius infinitely better than fahrenheit.

7

Sure.  Next time my wife asks me how hot it is outside I'm going to tell her 25.3 degrees and she will be amazed and forever impressed. For sure...

0