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this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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I was taught both.
Just like I was taught both metric and imperial.
I use both temp scales, though fahrenheit is more common.
I use both measurements scales, though imperial is more common.
One thing I've never understood though. Metric is more precise for measurements (at least without needing to involve fractional measures). I totally get why it's superior for a lot of things, and indeed it is used in many places for this exact reason.
Why would anyone say Celsius is better? Apart from freezing and boiling temps seeming somewhat arbitrary with fahrenheit, does it not allow for much higher precision with regards to temperature identification without resorting to decimals? Isn't this the same rationale used with metric vs imperial? It seems like a double standard to me, because remembering two temperatures (for boiling and freezing) seems like a small price to pay for a more precise system.
Because for science calculations, the Kelvin scale makes the most sense and Celcius is the Kelvin scale shifted up to make it useful for our daily use.
I've always thought Fahrenheit was the better measurement in regards to weather. 0 F is uncomfortably cold, 100 F is uncomfortably hot. It makes so much sense for the weather. 0 C is freezing, 100 C you are dead. Of course, for most things Celsius makes more sense, and even though I live in the US I don't even know how to measure computer temperatures in F, it just sounds crazy. When it comes to weather though? Fahrenheit is where it is, in my opinion.
Please guys, I know plenty of you will disagree with me, that's okay, this is just my opinion. Please don't get upset I know metric is generally better!
I always found fahrenheit a lot more arbitrary: in Celsius 0 is the freezing of water, so if you are driving/walking, that is a very important temperature to look out for. Also 30 being hot or 100 being hot outside does not really make a difference. Some people find 30 hot, some other find it OK, since its subjective anyway
Water freezes at 0°C at standard pressure, sea level.
If you are above or below, it will be different.
Saying "It's not 0°C outside so there's no ice on the road" is dumb. Because there could definitely be ice on the road.
You should be looking out for other things while driving. Not if the one thermometer, who knows where, is saying that it's 0°C or not.
As usual, there should be a bit of flexibility in there. I am not saying "oh, it's 0C, therefore ALL water in all town is frozen , lets wait until it gets to 1C so all water melt". But more on the line "oh, its around 0C (+ or - 5C), lets be careful while driving because some of the streets might have ice". Farenheit freezing temp is 32 I think? Thats VERY arbitrary. A lot more than C.
23°F to 41°F is -5°C to 5°C
If it's below 40°F I'd be cautious of Ice. Once again, it doesn't matter that water freezes at exactly 32°F at standard pressure.
It's like boiling water. No one puts a thermometer in water to make sure that it hits 100°C exactly.
150°F water will scald you in a second (65°C)
140°F water will scaled you in 3 seconds (60°C)
120°F water will scaled you in 10 minutes (50°C)
+100°F water has the potential to scaled you (~40°C)
I'd rather know that +100°F water has a chance to burn me than remembering +40°C has a chance.
That's way more important knowledge than the freezing and boiling temperatures of water at standard pressure.
You are already using Celsius as well. If you just did not know Fahrenheit, you obviously would not miss it. To us Celcius feels just as natural as Fahrenheit does to you. It would be nice to have one global system we can agree on, just like we agree on english being the language of the internet. English is my 2nd language and if I can learn a whole other language, then americans can learn metric. (Is celcius part of the metric system? I have no idea tbh)
Celcius isn't rocket science
For 99% of things it's simply reading a thermometer or typing in numbers on a device to set a temperature.
Just like I would have to look up what temperature to bake my cookies, 325°F, 350°F, 400°F. I'd have to look it up to cook them in C.
Me "knowing" the system doesn't help me. Because I have no idea what 325°F really is. That would cook my skin, no way I'm "feeling" it. All it is is just a number to me. If I had to push 325 or 163 on my oven it makes no difference to me.
When someone says I put a liter of gas in my car, I can reasonably think and know what a liter is. To me, the easiest way is that it's half of a 2L of soda because soda is sold in metric liters, and it gives me a reference. I also know that a liter is basically 1/4 gallon.
But when you say 28°C, I have nothing to compare it to. I know 40°C is really hot, and 20°C is basically room temperature. Even that doesn't even help me. So I guess I can deduce it's somewhere in the middle? It's 82°F. But I have no reference to how 28°C feels.
82°F. Is low 80's, I know what low 80's feels like. Easy for me to figure out the realitive temperature.
Fahrenheit and weather temperatures just line up so good at 0-100.
But if you just thought of 82°F as 82% hot you could easily get a general idea of how hot it is.
Livable temperatures are between 50°F and 100°F. Humans like it halfway between the two. ~75% hot. 65°F is a cold house, 85°F is a hot house. 99% of homes are between those two and still averages to 75°F.
1°F is smaller than 1°C.
82°F vs 83°F a normal person wouldn't be able to tell the difference. But you know, as it approaches 85°F or 90°F it's definitely heating up.
I could say 93°F. 93% hot. That's pretty hot. I'm sure you could wrap your mind around that.
But tell me 34°C and how am I suppose to really quickly wrap my head around that?
6° less than the hottest realistic temperature outside? I don't even know how 1°C drop feels, much less 6°.
Fahrenheit is asking a human how hot it is, Celsius is asking water. This is what I was taught. I have no idea how you ask water for anything
Billions of people use Celsius to determine how hot it is. Are they not human?
Maybe, maybe not but surely they are mostly water
The problem is that humans are subjective in my opinion. Water is not (or at least not the the degree humans are). With the same pressure, all water freeze at the same temp. Ask a Minnesotan or a Floridian (just to remain within the US, can use Greek/Norwegian for EU) what "cold" means, and they'll have VERY different answers
No they're not. They're just meat popsicles.
I mean, we could get the temperature up to 100 and see which are human and which are meat..
laughs in Finnish sauna
Celcius is better if you didn't grow up drinking the USA koolaid
Celsius*
I only use Fahrenheit for cooking with my oven, and that is it. But I'm Canadian.
Because precision has nothing to do with it and it's all about being easy to convert between different units and having sensible zero and 100-points for temperature?
How often do you convert temperature to different units? Isn't that what we are stupid for doing?
And I would like to know why precision is irrelevant for temperature but relevant for other things.
I'm being genuine, I'm not trying to shit on you. I'm pretty open about liking the metric system, and I think the reason we don't use it is largely the extreme administrative costs of doing so more than anyone thinking imperial is actually better. I think most agree it's pretty clearly worse.
But I legitimately don't understand how people can argue Celsius over fahrenheit when the arguments for fahrenheit largely match those for the metric system.
I was talking about Metric as a whole, where the units of measurement for distance, mass, etc. are easily convertible and the unit for temperature has sensible zero- and 100-points. I would have thought that was obvious.
Why would you talk about metric as a whole in response to a question asking about Celsius in particular? I very openly stated that I understand why metric in general is used for measurements of length, weight, and volume and asked specifically why people argue that Celsius is superior when its weaknesses in comparison to fahrenheit are similar to imperial's weaknesses in comparison to metric.
I would have thought that was obvious.
Fahrenheit has a fairly sensible 0 - just as Celsius is the temp of ice water, Fahrenheit is the temp of salty ice water.
Why write 36.111 C when you could write 97 F? Its the same reason you write 3cm instead of 0.03m. Its just more convenient even though its the same thing.
Why write 96.8 F when you could write 36 C? Do you honestly believe that we're thinking about temperatures in Fahrenheit and then just converting to Celsius when we write them down?
Why on earth would I think that? I made the comparison to other units of measurement to demonstrate why smaller units are useful in some cases. There are cases where its not useful, but there are also many cases where the advantages of Celsius aren't useful. Neither is inherently better, the correct one to use is the one you know better or the one that fits the use case better.
In fairness to Fahrenheit, you can round it to a whole number with a lesser difference in feel. That's more for feel though, for measurements of temp in cooking or chemistry, Celsius is useful due to boiling point.
Agreed, though if you are measuring it via instrument then what difference does it make how "round" the number is?
I was more thinking of when you're telling your friend what the temperature is outside, or scenarios similar to that. It's not useful in most other applications.
What difference does it make if the temperature is 79 or 80 F? That's a difference of about half a Celsius, and as a Celsius user, I can tell you that I don't plan my daily life based on a half a degree difference, or even a one degree difference; 5 degree precision is almost always enough.
I pointed something similar with regard to thermometers to a group of European tourists. In Farenheidt, 98.6 is the normal temperature and if you are getting sick, people will say that 99 is a low-grade fever. While that is a. 4 degree difference in F, that's only a .2 difference in C.
Likewise for weather, F is much more precise and easier to communicate given that there is a smaller interval between units. There's more than 2 units difference in F for every 1 unit difference in C. That's huge when you're talking about the difference between 38 and 39 C
It may astonish you to learn that it's very easy to work in fractional degrees Celsius and it's done commonly.
Not on my AC unit. I’d love a fractional temp for perfection, but I can’t get it because integers values for Celsius have a noticeably large gap between them.
Lol, you have to use fractional measures because each degree is further apart. I thought I had made that point. Sure you won't ever get rid of all fractional measuring in any system, but it's much easier if you don't have to use as much
Celsius is better because it's the standard used by almost the entire world. If you're talking with anyone but Americans or you're working in science then you're using Celsius.
The rest is just arbitrary - you can get used to either system.
Ah the old "it's what everyone does so it must be better" argument. A classic.
That's not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying there's little to no difference in practical use, except for the convenience of using a standard. Standards make life much easier because you're talking the same language as everyone else. When you're pretty much the only country still using Fahrenheit maybe it's time to think about using the global standard?