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Interesting. 100F is supposed to be normal human body temperature, by definition. (Fahrenheit set 100F as normal human body temperature and 0 as the coldest t
by nostrademons 7y ago
Interesting. 100F is supposed to be normal human body temperature, by definition. (Fahrenheit set 100F as normal human body temperature and 0 as the coldest temperature he could achieve, using a mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride.) For years I'd heard that the reason normal body temperature is 98.6 is because Fahrenheit was running a slight fever at the time he made his scale, but this article suggests that it might've been accurate, but body temperature has been decreasing. If you extrapolate the numbers in the article out (a drop of just over a degree since the 1800s) to when Fahrenheit made his scale in 1724, it's possible that normal body temperature actually was very close to 100F then.
- jefftk 7y agoThermometers weren't very accurate initially, and the scales were defined multiple times in the early years. Here's what Wikipedia has on this: According to a letter Fahrenheit wrote to his friend Herman Boerhaave,[10] his scale was built on the work of Ole Rømer, whom he had met earlier. In Rømer's scale, brine freezes at zero, water freezes and melts at 7.5 degrees, body temperature is 22.5, and water boils at 60 degrees. Fahrenheit multiplied each value by four in order to eliminate fractions and make the scale more fine-grained. He then re-calibrated his scale using the melting point of ice and normal human body temperature (which were at 30 and 90 degrees); he adjusted the scale so that the melting point of ice would be 32 degrees and body temperature 96 degrees, so that 64 intervals would separate the two, allowing him to mark degree lines on his instruments by simply bisecting the interval six times (since 64 is 2 to the sixth power). Fahrenheit soon after observed that water boils at about 212 degrees using this scale. The use of the freezing and boiling points of water as thermometer fixed reference points became popular following the work of Anders Celsius and these fixed points were adopted by a committee of the Royal Society led by Henry Cavendish in 1776. Under this system, the Fahrenheit scale is redefined slightly so that the freezing point of water is exactly 32 °F, and the boiling point is exactly 212 °F or 180 degrees higher. It is for this reason that normal human body temperature is approximately 98.2° (sic) on the revised scale (whereas it was 90° on Fahrenheit's multiplication of Rømer, and 96° on his original scale). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit#History
- DenisM 7y ago> Fahrenheit set 100F as normal human body temperature Nope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit#History
- tomjakubowski 7y agoMuch more here, with references. An early version of the scale set 96F to human body temperature, apparently because 96 divides evenly in half five times, so it's easy to make graduated markings between the reference points on your mercury thermometer. https://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/solutions/faq/zero-fahrenheit.shtml https://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/solutions/faq/...
- mkl 7y agoActually, Fahrenheit set 96°F as human body temperature (and the scale has been changed a bit since). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit and https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1266/on-the-fahrenheit-scale-do-0-and-100-have-any-special-significance/ https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1266/on-the-fahren...