10 ms·
Show HN: Degrees What?
One of my pet peeves is when people specify a temperature in "degrees" when it’s not clear from the context which scale is being used. I always want to ask “degrees what?”
So I made this little conversion tool that uses degrees angle to convert between degrees Fahrenheit and degrees Celsius.
Tip: you can add a number in a query to link directly to a temperature. e.g. https://degreeswhat.com/?100 https://degreeswhat.com/?100
- fouronnes3 3y agoCongrats on a good execution of a fun idea. The mobile UX feels very good. Also sorry to be that guy but: > when people specify a temperature in "degrees" when it’s not clear from the context which scale is being used. It should be degrees Celsius. Anything else is just insane ;)
- Vecr 3y ago"Degrees Kelvin". Yeah, I've actually heard that.
- laingc 3y agoTo be fair, that is actually common in physics. Elsewhere obviously not so much.
- defrost 3y agoCelsius = Kelvin + offset in any case, they're not so different .. not like that other scale used in very few countries.
- mdturnerphys 3y agoI think the point was that it's just "Kelvin" not "degrees Kelvin"
- laingc 3y agoI didn’t pick that up, but I suppose that’s fair. I’ve heard both, as I have with Celsius.
- pwdisswordfishc 3y agoIt's an obsolete name, but was official at one point.
- mbork_pl 3y ago"It's an old code, but it checks out." :-P
- jgilias 3y agoWhat do you mean? It’s a different scale that has the same ‘unit length’ as Celsius, but it’s not the same. Also, it’s very much ‘current’ in the physics context.
- dghf 3y agoI'm assuming they mean the "degrees" part. These days, the standard is to say (for example) 200 kelvin, not 200 degrees Kelvin.
- arrowsmith 3y agoThey meant that the name "degree Kelvin" is obsolete (since 1967 according to Wikipedia), not that the unit of measurement itself is obsolete.
- perilunar 3y agoThanks! No argument from me about Celsius, but even on this site there are people who think otherwise.
- nirse 3y agoI agree, but some of my favourite cookbooks are American. What can you do?
- lvncelot 3y agoConvert to F and also buy measuring cups/spoons and glare angrily from the recipe to my trusty scale, which stands unused in the corner, I guess. Measuring by weight is the one cooking-related hill that I will die on. (Recently, I had a recipe ask for four cups of lettuce, which could've been anything from 0.5x to 4x of what I finally went with, depending on how much I packed the cups. It's lunacy)
- silisili 3y agoMost of my use of degrees is either in cooking or weather. Having a larger scale means more accuracy, seeing as we don't use decimals in either. I'm not saying it makes a ton of sense, but my only real defense of it. That said, I find negative units rather silly in most measurements, so we should really be using K I think.
- seszett 3y ago> * Most of my use of degrees is either in cooking or weather. Having a larger scale means more accuracy, seeing as we don't use decimals in either.* That's your choice though. Outside temperature cannot be measured precisely enough to warrant decimals (it's supposed to be 17.4°C outside but who can tell the difference with 17°C or 18°C...) but my car's A/C is set to 21.5°C and my home's heating is set to 19.5°C.
- silisili 3y agoI figure C is like F for cooking, correct me if I'm wrong. Everything is a multiple of 5, you'll never see bake at 372F or something odd. If C is the same way, that's probably pretty restricting.
- Symbiote 3y agoEvery recipe I've seen has the oven temperature as a multiple of 20°C. Ovens aren't accurate enough for measuring 5°C, let alone 2.5°C. (Ignoring badly-translated American recipes which call for 179°C and 454.5g of potatoes.) For air temperature, my behaviour wouldn't change at all if someone told me it is 18±0.25°C rather than the normal 18±0.5°C. We could round to the nearest 2° and it would be fine.
- pjc50 3y agoGet a cheap IR thermometer. For both ovens and rooms, you can use it to see that the temperature varies by up to a few degrees C from top to bottom. > badly-translated American recipes which call for 179°C and 454.5g of potatoes This drives me up the wall .. but a lot of UK goods are sold in "metric-numbered imperial sizes". At the weekend I bought 450g (half lb) of meat and a 6.3mm (1/4") router bit.
- arrowsmith 3y agoI'm British and always used to think that Fahrenheit was stupid but I've warmed up to it (pardon the pun) after spending some time in the U.S. Celsius is obviously more useful in a scientific context, but 99% of the time when I'm talking about the temperature, I'm not doing a scientific experiment, I'm asking "how hot/cold is it outside?" In that context I actually find Fahrenheit to be a more intuitively useful scale once you get used to it. Celsius crams the entire range of likely outdoor temperatures into a narrow range with awkwardly-sized units that don't provide enough information. If someone tells me it's 15C outside, how many layers do I need to wear? I still don't have a good feel for it from the number alone, even after spending most of my life in countries where Celsius is the norm. But in Fahrenheit, things make more obvious sense. 0 F means "insufferably cold", 100 F means "insufferably hot", and to get a meaningful idea of what the weather feels like on my skin, I just need the range: it's "in in fifties" or "in the seventies" etc.. It takes some getting used to, but I actually quite like it. Thanks, America! (I'd also make a similar argument that feet and inches are a much more intuitively meaningful scale than centimetres for measuring human height. But that might be my British bias.)
- Dalewyn 3y agoLike you, I also find celsius more useful for knowing how hot some thing is while fahrenheit is more useful for knowing how hot some where is. I also find inches, feet, miles etc. more intuitive than meters for basically everything. "so-and-so meters" or "such-and-such kilometers" doesn't describe anything to me, give it to me in inches/feet/miles so I can visualize the damn thing. Moral I suppose is that metric is great for describing the universe, but the problem is we're dumb apes.
- Epa095 3y agoI suppose the moral is that we relate to whatever measurement we grew up to and are used to. I have no problem visualising meters and kilometers, and I am as dumb an ape as you.
- globular-toast 3y ago> Thanks, America! Erm, they didn't invent it. Most (all?) American units were inherited from British. Farenheit was invented in Europe. I have also warmed to Imperial/American units for certain things. A lot of simple recipes are easier to remember in ounces than in grams. For example, 5 ounces of flour and 4 ounces of butter gives you enough shortcrust pastry for a 9 inch tin. Inches seem about the right size, but centimeters are too small. People's heights tend to fall around 5-6 feet which is nice, or 150-180/1.5-1.8 which is kind of awkward. Basically, imperial measurements seem much more "human" while metric seems based on arbitrary universal constants like the speed of light which have absolutely no bearing on our lives. None of this means that "cups" are a sane way to measure ingredients for cooking, though. There's just so many reasons why it's bad but even just from a laziness point of view it's an extra thing to wash up.
- mdturnerphys 3y agoI always want to ask “degrees what?" I once worked on a system that ran at -40 degrees. I loved leaving off the scale when giving tours and telling about it, because someone would invariably ask if I meant Celsius or Fahrenheit and then everyone got to learn where the crossing point of the two scales is.
- lostmsu 3y ago-40K are impossible AFAIK
- a2800276 3y agoThat's why they say it's -40 degrees. :P
- Lester_Square 3y agoKelvin is not measured in degrees however, so is excluded by implication
- flangola7 3y agoIt's not? What is it measured in then?
- bmicraft 3y agoK, not °K
- unwind 3y agoIt is simply measured in Kelvin. Kelvin is the standard unit for temperature, 0 Kelvin is the absolute zero point. Each step is the same size as a degree Celsius, but there are no "degrees". Edit: remove assertion that the scale does not go into negative, because physics.
- deelly 3y agoAs a non-native reader, I`m not sure that I understand. Could you explain why 100 Kelvin, but 100 degrees Celsius and 100 degrees Fahrenheit? Is there some special meaning in a word "degrees" there?
- defrost 3y agoThe 'compass' setting is a minefield if done 'correctly' For the kinds of maps I coded for in the 1980's you'll want your compass rose to indicate * Geographic North (on, say a WGS84 ellipsoid) * Magnetic North (where a magnetic compass points, this varies by time and geographic location) * Rotational North (the spin axis of the planet - it walks a bit) This things can be added if you're looking for an additional ( pointless? ) challenge.
- perilunar 3y agoI was tempted to add device orientation for mobile, but figured people might think it was an actual compass, and AFAIK support is a bit spotty.
- defrost 3y agoIt's a challenge and it'll force you to ask what and why are you doing this for. There's "real life navigation" - these things matter at high and low latitudes, and near massive iron deposits such as Kursk, not so much elsewhere - although orienteering with magnetic compass only requires understanding of local deviations. There's also "teaching geodesy" - which might allow you to simulate changes of location etc. All of this, of course, goes beyond a simple exercise in inferface design and angles. I threw it in there in case you're looking for further coding exercises. I guess the remaining question is .. analog clock directions? Does the most recent generation need to be reminded to watch their six o'clock? [*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk_Magnetic_Anomaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk_Magnetic_Anomaly
- Proven 3y ago[dead]
- someweirdperson 3y agoA small inconsistency: The "i"nfo button claims it is also converting Kelvin, but those don't seem to be displayed. Kelvin is not degrees, probably the info text is wrong. Could the compass get the magnetic heading from the browser on mobile?
- perilunar 3y agoThere's more info in landscape mode. (I should add that to the info) Yes, possibly. There's a webkit extension but I'm not sure how well it's supported. I'll look into it.
- a2800276 3y ago> I always want to ask “degrees what?” Well, the simpler solution would have been to just use radians ;)
- perilunar 3y agoᴿC or ᴿF ?
- LeafItAlone 3y agoReally cool idea and neat tool to play with. And thank you for the tip at the bottom of your post for putting in a specific value. That’s the first thing I wanted!
- bee_rider 3y agoNext convert it to radians.
- ktpsns 3y agoGive the angle not only in radians, but also in units of tau https://math.fandom.com/wiki/Tau_(constant) https://math.fandom.com/wiki/Tau_(constant) ;-)
- perilunar 3y agoIn landscape orientation there's radians, gons, turns, and °Ra conversions as well as °C and °F. I use tau in the code actually. JS trig functions use radians, and SVG uses degrees; when I convert I use tau instead of pi.
- askvictor 3y agoRadians is there (on laptop at least). Never heard of gons before, but it's missing mils (used in the military as 1 mil with a radius of 1km subtends an arc of about 1m. Actually, never thought about whether the US military would use it, what with their funny units and all). Though I suppose a mil is a milli-radian.
- thih9 3y ago> Degrees What? is a tool for converting temperatures between Celsius (°C), Fahrenheit (°F), Kelvin (K) and other scales. Is the description accurate? How to display Kelvin units or other scales?
- perilunar 3y agoTry landscape orientation.
- albert_e 3y agoidea: add a checkbox to make the red line "snap" to the tick marks / major scales. (user can press Alt key to re-enable fine control momentarily)
- wruza 3y agoThis design reminds me an example from Jef Raskin’s book about user interfaces. Instead of choosing a mode (C->F, F->C) it just shows both results, so a user can pick what they need without interacting. It would be cool if compass was inertial.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoThanks for reminding me I need to finally Read Raskin. I occasionally hear the name in context of UI and approachable computing, but I somehow imagine he'd go in opposite direction to increasing information density. This approach reminds me of the works of a different person - Edward Tufte. He writes about visualizing information, but that by itself is a user interface (even if we didn't call it this until recently). He gives plenty of praise to designs like this - which show you everything at once, and play into strengths of your visual system, which is very good at focusing, zooming out, filtering out things you're not interested in, and switching focus rapidly.
- arp242 3y agoThe downside of this is that there are two numbers to read, which does increase the cognitive overload a little bit (and also requires more UI space, in some cases). But absent any context or input, this is also what I do, including for other things like dates: "4th of March", "Mar 4th", "Mar 4", or some variation thereof, rather than "3/4", "4-3", "2023-03-04", or whatever. This is the only way to make things instantly clear to everyone, no matter where they're from or their background.
- afgrant 3y agoI don’t get why you would conflate temperature degrees with angular degrees. They have nothing to do with each other.
- mdturnerphys 3y agoI presume that's kind of the point. It's fun.
- perilunar 3y ago"She said it was 95 degrees outside. I asked if she was being deliberately obtuse."
- g0ran 3y agoSuggestions. Add support for fine-tuning with mouse wheel. Keep fun facts separate, based on degrees or compass view.
- oytis 3y agoCool, always wanted a tool to convert an angle to Fahrenheit.
- kazinator 3y agoDisappointed not to see: 6: degrees of separation, at most, between any two people. Also, USA murder degrees: first, second, third. Another thing: the melting point of 60/40 solder is there; but not the eutectic mixture 63/37. Geeeeez!
- perilunar 3y agoI considered adding 6 degrees of separation, but couldn't think of a concise way to phrase it, then forgot about it. If anyone has interesting temperatures or angles to add, please do!
- fake-name 3y agoHow is this literally a compass visualization and yet it has no mention of radians?
- pjc50 3y agoAs comment up thread: radians farenheit or radians celsius?
- qwertox 3y agoIt gives me anxiety. So much information which I know I'm missing out because of the navigation. Maybe there's something I find a bit more interesting than the melting point of Benzene at standard atmospheric pressure, but how will I know?
- Madmallard 3y agoneat
- mnw21cam 3y ago> 15° is the angle the Earth turns in one hour It's actually more like 15.0411° in an hour. This matters if you're keeping a telescope pointed at something in the night sky to take a picture of it.
- xnorswap 3y agoIs that just down to frame of reference, i.e. the difference between the solar day and the sidereal day?
- j1elo 3y agoFor those who didn't know, Kelvin is already its own measurement. Think of it like on the same level as "meters" or "miles". You wouldn't say "500 degrees Kelvin", like you would 't say "50 amounts of meters". This is because Kelvin, like meters/miles, are already a measurement of some physical feature, in this case of kinetic energy of the particles. The word "degrees", on the other hand, does not represent a meaningful measurement of anything. It just means a given part of some arbitrary whole, defined by convention. e.g. the "whole" of an angular degree is just a single complete rotation. The "whole" of a Celsius degree, I believe is the range that goes between water freezing (0°C) and boiling (100°C) points, and that's why it was also known as the centigrade scale. Extra curiosity: still as of nowadays, if you say the complete temperature unit in Spanish, you don't say "35 degrees Celsius", you say "35 centigrade degrees" (35 grados centígrados). At least in a colloquial context; not sure how they'd say it in a science-related professional environment.
- ASalazarMX 3y agoI'd contest that Kelvins, being the same as centigrade degrees but counting from absolute zero, have a case for being called degrees too. On a side note, it would be awesome if all temperatures were in Kelvins.
- j1elo 3y agoI guess the difference is more based on subtle historic reasons than strong definitions? Not sure on that one. I do know that Kelvins are based on an absolute zero value, i.e. it's impossible to achieve a lower than 0 Kelvin temperature in the Universe, while Celsius in comparison feels like a very arbitrary choice being based on stuff that happen to something (water) at some places of the universe (1 atm of pressure). > On a side note, it would be awesome if all temperatures were in Kelvins You have my unconditional vote on that one! :-D
- sails 3y agoI like it. The link https://degreeswhat.com/?100 https://degreeswhat.com/?100 too quickly tracks the mouse and you lose the pointer to the specific degrees Unfortunately your compass bearings seems a bit off. 1. Compass degrees go 0 to 360 2. North is traditionally at the top Yours only has half the compass (East) and seems to be reversed or mirrored Edit: direct linking works https://degreeswhat.com/?270 https://degreeswhat.com/?270 and I get the correct bearing (270 = West), I think it is still mirrored for a compass because you increase from 0 anticlockwise.
- Pannoniae 3y agoLifehack: you can't select 400 degrees on the clock itself, but https://degreeswhat.com/?400 https://degreeswhat.com/?400 works perfectly ;)
- Jarmsy 3y agoI'd like to see something similar for just the real number line - to scroll and see notable values.
- yodon 3y agoHuge missed opportunity in this tool to actually answer the "wtf degrees?" question. Fahrenheit temperature degrees are based on concepts of angular degrees (just as Centigrade is based on concepts of slope). Many people know the Fahrenheit temperature scale is based in part on the coldest fixed temperature readily available to a scientist in the 1700's, namely the coldest temperature achievable when water ice is placed in a salt water bath (which he called 0 degrees). Because choosing this fixed point meant Fahrenheit was basing his temperature scale on water, he viewed the coldest pure water temperature (ice) and the hottest pure water temperature (boiling) as significant in that they were, in his mind, opposite "directions" for water. In his mind, frozen water and boiling water were therefore 180 degrees apart from each other. Why did water ice and boiling water get these crazy 32 degree and 212 degree temperatures? The Fahrenheit scale is based on two constraints, not one. The first, as is commonly known, is optimally salted ice water should be zero degrees. The second constraint is that frozen water and boiling water should be 180 degrees apart. 212 degrees - 32 degrees = 180 degrees. If you constrain the temperature of salted ice to 0 and constrain the temperatures of frozen and boiling water to differ by 180, you get the fixed points of 32 and 212. When Celsius invented the temperature scale we call centigrade, he used very similar constraints and also used angular thinking. Both scales consider the freezing and boiling points of pure water to be significant. The Celsius scale uses the freezing point of water as its zero, the Fahrenheit scale does not. The Fahrenheit scale uses 180 degree based angular thinking to describe the transition from ice to steam, hence T(boiling) - T(ice) = 180. The Celsius scale uses surveyor's percentage slope terminology (where a "grade", as in centigrade, of 100 corresponds to rise = 100% of run, or 45 degrees in angular terms), so T(boiling) - T(ice) = 100. This page would be a wonderful vehicle for showing these connections (and the ice equals about 30 degrees and human body temperature equals about 90 degrees coincidences that Fahrenheit the numerologist found so compelling). I hope the creator tweaks their page to show the actual angular history and relevance of these temperature scales. There is quite a bit of history of science in these relationships, all with the advantage of being readily accessible to a bright grammar school kid, which is a great age to stoke the fires of interest in science.
- SergeAx 3y agoJust assume it is Celsius. There's only one county on Earth using Fahrenheit, and it's less than 5% of Earth population or land area.
- JEDI-HACKER 3y ago[dead]
- forsakenharmony 3y agoOn desktop, when the ratio of the window approaches 1:1 the whole page jumps around a lot
- fouc 3y agoJust a note - I went to the ?100 link you gave, but my mouse cursor was already hovering over the compass area, which caused the value to deviate basically right away because I was moving my cursor before knowing what the page was doing.
- ShakirWorks 3y agoSo cool, simple and informative!