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Temperature - at what temperature does the water freeze? 0C, 32F. At what temperature does the water boil? 100C, 212F. Which ones are easier to remember on a da

• atonse 7y ago
  How often are you boiling and freezing water when deciding what clothes to wear? Ok so when measuring water freezing, you have a nice 0. But how do you measure hot weather? 30C? 35C? Meaningless numbers, correct? I am talking about daily weather. Celsius is no more intuitive than Fahrenheit when discussing it. Even with cooking, when you are around a certain system, you're just used to it. I bake a cake at 350F, I fry things at 350-400F. 175C is no more practical than 350F. I need to cook meat to at least 140F-160F to kill the bacteria. The equivalents in Celsius are no easier to remember from a practical standpoint. Even body temperature, from my understanding, almost everyone uses 98.5F, correct? (At least in India, where everything was KG and KM, people still used to measure body temperature in F).
  • galaxyLogic 7y ago
    Well fridge should not go below 0 Celsius or you have trouble. Teach your children that. When thinking about boiling water it is easier to think how close to it you are in Celsius, 50% if temp is 50 Celsius. Personally I'm from Europe but live in US and have trouble with weather forecasts in Fahrenheit. They don't make sense especially when it gets cold. Even IF Celsius and Fahrenheit were equally good for most purposes, it would be easier if every continent used the same system. Why, because people travel, often from continent to continent. So if we (the people of Earth) should choose we should most probably choose Celsius, even if it were just slightly better than Fahrenheit.
    • saagarjha 7y ago
      > Well fridge should not go below 0 Celsius or you have trouble There are things in the world other than fridges. > When thinking about boiling water I only really do this about 1% of the time I need to use temperature. > Even IF Celsius and Fahrenheit were equally good for most purposes, it would be easier if every continent used the same system. Why, because people travel, often from continent to continent. This is really the only reason to use Celsius: it works well with other things.
  • tigershark 7y ago
    Seriously you don’t see any difference in defining hot weather as 1/3 of the boiling temperature of water? Try to do that in Fahrenheit and you have to do something crazy like (212 - 32) / 3 + 32, and I’m not even 100% sure that is correct... And I guess that for you is much better to remember that at 32 F is very dangerous to drive outside rather than at 0. I really can’t understand how can someone would advocate for maths gimmicks when you have a much easier solution that is even an international standard (or to be precise it’s extremely easy to convert to and from that standard)
    • baseballdork 7y ago
      "1/3 of the boiling temperature of water" is just as arbitrary as "32". Generally speaking, you get freeze warnings and black ice warnings when necessary instead of checking to see whether or not the current temp is literally below the freezing point of water. I think OP was just saying that it's good enough for a layperson to use day-to-day.
    • saagarjha 7y ago
      > Seriously you don’t see any difference in defining hot weather as 1/3 of the boiling temperature of water? This comparison is utterly meaningless to me, and I say this as someone who prefers to use Celsius.
    • likpok 7y ago
      In Fahrenheit, hot is 100 and cold is 0. In Celsius, hot is 30 and cold is -10. When talking about it for what you're wearing and subjective experience, Celsius is a little more awkward and compressed. Sure, scientifically celsius is more useful, but how often does that overlap with the weather?
      • tigershark 7y ago
        No, cold is 0 in Celsius. You risk your life in icy roads at 0.
  • JoshTriplett 7y ago
    > Even body temperature, from my understanding, almost everyone uses 98.5F, correct? 98.6 is the approximation most people memorize in Fahrenheit. That number implies more precision than you can reasonably assume in practice, however.
    • atonse 7y ago
      Sure, my point was that the unit of measurement for body temperature in many places that use metric is probably still Fahrenheit, not Celsius. (And that it doesn't really hurt anything, since the boiling and freezing point of water is irrelevant in checking whether a human is ok or not)
• viklove 7y ago
  At what temperature does the human body rest? ~100F. At what temperature is frostbite a concern to uncovered skin? ~0F. I feel like these benchmarks are more useful in my day to day life than water temps.
  • ninkendo 7y ago
    Yup, that’s one of my favorite things about the Fahrenheit scale: it’s a good approximation of “on a scale of 1-100, how cold/hot is it outside?” where a broad range of human climates would agree on the answer. 0F is pretty dang cold out, and 100 is pretty dang hot out. Sure, there are temperatures in human habitats outside that range, but most people would consider then “extreme” temperatures, hence values less than zero, or greater than 100.
    • asavadatti 7y ago
      > 0F is pretty dang cold out, and 100 is pretty dang hot out That is pretty subjective and no better than Celsius. Anything below 30F is pretty dang cold for me and anything above 85F is too hot
• gok 7y ago
  The water freezing/boiling point calibration points seem interesting until you realize that you're never actually at 1 atmosphere (due to elevation and weather) or working with pure water.
• pwinnski 7y ago
  You mean at what temperature does water freeze at sea level, right? Pure water, I mean, not normal tap water. Or, you know, just keep the freezer cold enough to take care of it regardless.