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> Fahrenheit is more appropriate unit because it represents human compatible temperature 0 being the freezing point of a mix of water, ice and ammonium chlorid

> Fahrenheit is more appropriate unit because it represents human compatible temperature 0 being the freezing point of a mix of water, ice and ammonium chloride and 100 being almost the average human body temperature - or to put it another way, "a random number fixed to a variable". Neither of these are things I can instinctively understand as a human. Celcius on the other hand uses extremely hard to grasp concepts for a human, like the freezing point of water and at the upper end of the scale (is it a random number? no, it's) the boiling point of water - both things a person is likely to encounter in their lifetime, possibly even more than once. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nROK4cjQVXM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nROK4cjQVXM

philwelch 7y ago
0 degrees is "really fucking cold outside" and 100 degrees is "really fucking hot outside". Celsius resorts to negative numbers even for a normal snowy day while wasting about half of the positive two-digit numbers for temperatures that have never been recorded on Earth. It's a terrible scale for weather.
- athenot 7y ago
  Having negative numbers for when water is in a different state is quite a convenient representation, especially for weather. To follow your scale, -50ºC is really cold (polar weather) and +50 is really hot (desert weather). Yes there are places hotter and colder but it's a continuum with convenient points that stick out less than a phase change of the liquid which is so integral to life, be it human, fauna or flora.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    Even -40°C is very far outside the range of where virtually anybody lives, though. It's equivalent to -40°F. Most places never reach that temperature. The problem with a 100-degree scale centered around the freezing point of water is that the freezing point of water actually is approximately 1/3 of the way along the scale between "exceptionally cold" and "exceptionally hot"--it isn't a midpoint--and so by the time you reach -50°C you're solidly in the realm of "potentially record-setting low temperature for most places on Earth". The more analogous range is -20°C to 40°C, and that's with 2-3 degrees of rounding on both sides. The freezing point of water is an important temperature, but it's not a temperature that should be treated as being "off the scale" or even at the edge of the scale, which is what the number 0 implies. Being able to represent most survivable air temperatures with unsigned 2-digit numbers is more convenient than not having to remember the freezing point of water, as is the heuristic of any exception to that rule representing an exceptional weather condition.

philwelch 7y ago

0 degrees is "really fucking cold outside" and 100 degrees is "really fucking hot outside". Celsius resorts to negative numbers even for a normal snowy day while wasting about half of the positive two-digit numbers for temperatures that have never been recorded on Earth. It's a terrible scale for weather.

athenot 7y ago
Having negative numbers for when water is in a different state is quite a convenient representation, especially for weather. To follow your scale, -50ºC is really cold (polar weather) and +50 is really hot (desert weather). Yes there are places hotter and colder but it's a continuum with convenient points that stick out less than a phase change of the liquid which is so integral to life, be it human, fauna or flora.
- philwelch 7y ago
  Even -40°C is very far outside the range of where virtually anybody lives, though. It's equivalent to -40°F. Most places never reach that temperature. The problem with a 100-degree scale centered around the freezing point of water is that the freezing point of water actually is approximately 1/3 of the way along the scale between "exceptionally cold" and "exceptionally hot"--it isn't a midpoint--and so by the time you reach -50°C you're solidly in the realm of "potentially record-setting low temperature for most places on Earth". The more analogous range is -20°C to 40°C, and that's with 2-3 degrees of rounding on both sides. The freezing point of water is an important temperature, but it's not a temperature that should be treated as being "off the scale" or even at the edge of the scale, which is what the number 0 implies. Being able to represent most survivable air temperatures with unsigned 2-digit numbers is more convenient than not having to remember the freezing point of water, as is the heuristic of any exception to that rule representing an exceptional weather condition.