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Fahrenheit is great for measuring weather. 0 is roughly the temperature on the coldest series of days in most of the continental United States and Europe, and
by sam_goody 8y ago
Fahrenheit is great for measuring weather.
0 is roughly the temperature on the coldest series of days in most of the continental United States and Europe, and 100 is roughly the hottest.
Celsius is great for measuring water while cooking. 0 is freezing (at sea level, assuming a normal room temperature) and 100 is boiling (again, with caveats).
The metric system has everything evolving around a cubic meter of water, so Celsius is easy to grok, and feels logical.
But, having lived in the U.S. and Europe roughly an equal amount of time, Fahrenheit is much much more accurate to estimate outdoor temperature with.
And as it turns out, that's what most people are doing.
Cute asides: The meter is based on a miscalculation of the distance between the equator and North pole. The SI couldn't find anything absolute that actually matched their arbitrary size, so made it dependant on a bar in the SI building, and then realized the bar is changing sizes with time! (This is finally being rectified with some atomic measure.)
On the other hand, my sixth grade teacher taught us that 0 is the freezing point of beer, and 100 is the body temperature of a cow. So, the theory is that some drunk scientists thought a cow had fever..
- nl 8y agoFahrenheit is much much more accurate to estimate outdoor temperature with. And as it turns out, that's what most people are doing Which most people are you talking about? I don’t know anyone outside the US and occasionally the UK who uses Fahrenheit. That’s not “most people”.
- sp0rk 8y agoThey are saying that most people use temperature to talk about outdoor weather.
- ianai 8y agoFrom context, he probably meant most conversations involving temperature are discussing the weather. I’d think it’s more weather and cooking that people discuss.
- dmoo 8y agoIt's just a unit of measurement, neither is more accurate, they both mean what they mean. Also it is surprisingly easy to switch. In Ireland we moved from speed limits in miles to speed limits in kilometres. It was easy and people adjusted without any problems.
- tempestn 8y ago> Cute asides: The meter is based on a miscalculation of the distance between the equator and North pole. The SI couldn't find anything absolute that actually matched their arbitrary size, so made it dependant on a bar in the SI building, and then realized the bar is changing sizes with time! (This is finally being rectified with some atomic measure.) Actually the definition has gone through a number of rounds of increasing precision. It did have an atomic definition for a period of time, but now it's based on the speed of light. (IE the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299792458 of a second.) Too bad we didn't know the exact speed of light before coming up with the definition, or we could have a nice round 300,000,000 m/s!
- sam_goody 8y agoThat's exactly my point. It was first based on a miscalculation. When they realized that, they switched to a more accurate but still incorrect definition. They have gone through multiple iterations, each more accurate than the last, but none that are nice and round. Actually, if there wasn't so much politics (and fake science) involved, there are plenty of things they could have used from the get-go that would have been nice and round. The "nice round" figure that you offer from the speed of light, and suggest that they would have used had they known it then, is not nice and round and it is not related (and therefore would not have been used).
- gepi79 8y ago> But, having lived in the U.S. and Europe roughly an equal amount of time, Fahrenheit is much much more accurate to estimate outdoor temperature with. Of what use are the smaller steps with Fahrenheit ? I can not tell if it is 30 or 31 °C outside.
- cimmanom 8y agoThe usefulness isn’t in the granular steps. It’s in the intuitiveness of 100 being close to as hot as it gets and 0 being close to as cold as it gets, and being able to place any other temperature on that scale.
- presto8 8y ago> I can not tell if it is 30 or 31 °C outside. Most thermostats I've seen allow changes of 0.5 degrees C. So it seems that the thermostat manufacturers feel that the majority of users can tell a difference. And sometimes 1 degree C delta is too much for me in a room (e.g. 21.0 is comfortable, 22.0 is not, 21.5 is just right). So it's obviously a personal preference, but at least for me, I can tell a difference between 0.5 degrees C. And thus for my use case, whole integers in F is a slightly superior user experience since it avoid fractions.
- bromuro 8y ago> Fahrenheit is great for measuring weather. 0 is roughly the temperature on the coldest series of days in most of the continental United States and Europe, and 100 is roughly the hottest. This argument to me makes no sense: most of the human beings don't live either in the continental US or in Europe :) 0 Celsius to everybody means rain would ideally turn into snow, which makes it great for "measuring weather". And it is useful for agriculture too.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- CPLX 8y agoYou say that it is more accurate. But I think what you mean is that it’s more precise. Which is true.