I find it really bizarre that people can't understand the power that simply being used to something holds over the mind. Tough to just toss out going either direction!
If you live somewhere with warm summers & cold winters Celsius is the most logical way. “Its -5C, just a bit below freezing” or “Itll start at -5C and be icey & get up to 5C and slushy”. I grew up knowing both F and C (along with all the other imperial and metric measurements) and metric always wins
your point is obvious in that the system we are conditioned to makes more sense to each of us… but you clearly also see the point that f lines up neatly with our numeracy baseline across ~all societies? 0 is nothing and no heat, 100 is roughly speaking all the heats we can take
The F scale was, according to the story, from the lowest temperature of Fahrenheit's home town as 0 to the estimated body temperature which was thought originally to be 90, but later corrected at 96. Later, the scale was refined between 32 to 212, and finally, today, it is defined based on K.
So, the original was defined over 90 degrees, and the second one defines over 180 degrees (hence the term degree used for it!). 100 was never an important number for it.
1) children do not know how to describe temperature
2) the idea that 100 is a default number scale rather than one we have arrived incidentally due to the sheer overwhelming cultural influence of ancient greek science is nonsesne
As someone who grew up with Fahrenheit I don’t think it’s intuitive at all. It took a long time paying attention to specific numbers before I had any intuition for it.
I mean, how useful is that granularity really? All the real distinguishing thresholds are like 5° apart. If you want more granularity in Celsius you can always use half-degrees and get all the precision of Fahrenheit. But I don’t think granularity is very useful for human temperature perception.
Sure hot is hot but every summer is basically gonna be the hottest yet so people will need to get used to making decisions based on temp and learning about what wet bulb is
My work life is centered in Europe so I get subjectivity is king here and promise I know what it’s like switching all time
that’s true! I’d argue the granularity of f might be more useful from here on out, where temp difference will have big health impact depending how long you’re out there
When was the last time you stuck a thermometer in boiling water?
In my original post I made the point that it’s all subjective. Metric makes intuitive sense bc it’s standardized based on common numeric system. Temp is inverted
The problem with this is that most places that routinely see near-0 or near-100 F weather also frequently see values beyond them, and neither temperature is really a safety threshold (you can get frostbite above 0 F, and you can get heat stroke below 100 F). It makes sense but isn't really useful
"Makes sense but isn't really useful" is also true for "temperatures where water freezes and boils at sea level", of course, but that's not the argument for Celsius. The argument for Celsius is that it's an international standard.
Yeah hear all that, the problem is other international standards make logical and intuitive sense based on our shared number scale and temp is the one that’s inverted :)
oh fahrenheit is a human scale WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT like celsius is somehow beyond the capacity of the human mind to grasp? Aliens made up celsius or something?
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2) the idea that 100 is a default number scale rather than one we have arrived incidentally due to the sheer overwhelming cultural influence of ancient greek science is nonsesne
in your quest to have Celsius reign supreme you want to redefine basic math?
I mean it’s all subjective ofc, really hot to a Brazilian is different than really hot to a Dane
0-100 is just a more universal scale generally speaking
My work life is centered in Europe so I get subjectivity is king here and promise I know what it’s like switching all time
Kinda like 30something c is for “hot”
When was the last time you stuck a thermometer in boiling water?
In my original post I made the point that it’s all subjective. Metric makes intuitive sense bc it’s standardized based on common numeric system. Temp is inverted
(also, 0°F is only about -18°C, that's not very cold)