9 ms·

I'm pretty sure Martians measure temperature in Celsius.

• techthroway443 10y ago
  You say that now. Wait til they colonize!
• gregschlom 10y ago
  0 degrees Celsius being the freezing temperature of water at sea-level atmospheric pressure, that doesn't make much more sense either :-)
  • komali2 10y ago
    Why not? That's just one of the ways to measure the "constant" 0 degrees Celsius. What that temperature is doesn't change just because you're at different air pressure. You don't say "water boils at 100 degrees celsius at every altitude," you say "huh neat water boils at different temperatures at different altitudes."
  • the8472 10y ago
    technically it's defined as 0.01°C being the triple point of water. And since the solid-liquid boundary in the phase diagram[0] is relatively stable across wide pressure ranges that means that 0°C being the melting point is not just true at a single pressure value. [0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Phase_diagram_of_water.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Phase_di...
• ars 10y ago
  Celsius is equally arbitrary to Fahrenheit. No, Martians measure in Nano Yocto Planck Degrees above Absolute Zero, I hereby dub that unit the Plancktigrade.
  • lazyant 10y ago
    arbitrary yes, equally, no.
  • astrodust 10y ago
    Celsius at least has a family of units that mesh with it precisely. To heat one cubic centimetre of water up 1°C takes 1 Joule. It also essentially weighs 1 gram at normal temperatures. How many BTUs does it take to heat up one cubic foot of water by one degree Fahrenheit?
    • posterboy 10y ago
      I thought Kelvin would be the appropriate unit for temperature differences, deg. Celsius be only used for absolute values.
    • freeone3000 10y ago
      It takes one BTU to heat one pound of water, one pint, one degree Fahrenheit. The units may be arbitrary, but they still line up.
      • david-given 10y ago
        Is that a US or a UK pint?
      • astrodust 10y ago
        Yeah, but a pound of water is not a cubic foot. A pint has nothing to do with inches.
        • ars 10y ago
          That has nothing to do with temperature. You can keep metric and use Fahrenheit with very little change. And you got your units wrong anyway: "To heat one cubic centimetre of water up 1°C takes 1 Joule" - you mean 1 calorie, not 1 Joule. Change Celsius to Fahrenheit and only calorie changes, and since it's anyway not part of SI it makes little difference. Joule is the main energy unit, and it's not tied to Celsius at all. I totally get the arguments for metric - except for temperature. For temperature Fahrenheit is the better scale. Look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units#/media/File:SI_base_unit.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units#... And notice how Kelvin stands alone - it's not tied to any other unit. It can be replaced with almost no impact.
  • kbenson 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be pirate and/or ninja related[1], so you're missing a great opportunity to name it pirate-plancks. 1: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pirate%20ninja http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pirate%20ninj...
• bbcbasic 10y ago
  Kelvin, FTW
• abrowne 10y ago
  They use Kelvin. Source: KSR's Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy ;-)