3 ms·

The one imperial unit I prefer is temperature. Fahrenheit works so well for the human experience, 0 is the point where it's so cold it could kill you, 100 is t

The one imperial unit I prefer is temperature. Fahrenheit works so well for the human experience, 0 is the point where it's so cold it could kill you, 100 is the point where it's so hot it could kill you. Outside of laboratory applications don't really care about the freezing point of pure water at sea level, I'm rarely AT sea level and the few times I am I've traveled to sea level specifically to observe salt water!

lrasinen 3y ago
100 F is hardly a temperature that could kill you, unless you completely neglect hydration. But not drinking will kill you happily at lower temperatures. Also, living in a climate where winter temperatures often hover around the freezing point, you develop a healthy interest in it. As an example: If it's been a few days below 0 C, and then it warms to 3 C, the snow on the sidewalks will have compressed to ice whose top layer will now melt and create absolutely lethal walking conditions. Or if it freezes after having sleet conditions (0-4 C maybe), you get this craggy ice that's not as slippery but is uneven and thus a hazard in its own way. Also very miserable for bicycles. Anders Celsius was a Swede. He knew.
- cmiller1 3y ago
  100 F will absolutely kill you at 100% humidity.
  - lrasinen 3y ago
    Granted. But such conditions are rare and localized. When looking for extreme dew point values, I found this statement: "The highest dew point ever recorded was 35 °C, or 95 °F. This occurred on 8th July, 2003, in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. This happened because the air temperature was 42 °C, or 108 °F, and the relative humidity was 68.5 %." So tropical latitudes might care about temperature / dew point near those numbers, Northern Europe and friends spend their time worrying about freezing.
mikhailfranco 3y ago
The original post reads like satire. I assume your post is also sarcastic, or at least tongue-in-cheek. Fahrenheit is the most insane unit ever created. It is a snapshot of two random temperatures that just happened to be lowest temp easily achieved in 1724, and human body temperature (not a constant LOL), which he perversely assigned 90, not 100. Even acres seem to be derived from ploughing. I'm a farm boy, so I can relate to that, but I bet no city dweller has any vision of an acre in their mind's eye. Even a farm boy like me has trouble converting acres to sq. miles or sq. feet.
briHass 3y ago
It also gives you much more resolution, in integers, over the range a human is likely to experience. For something like a home thermostat, 71F, 72F, and 73F can easily be destinguished by feel and represented as a 2 digit number. Doing the same in C means rounding and losing steps or forcing you to deal with decimals, which people generally avoid.
- delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
  Your thermostat is probably lying to you—its sensor probably doesn't have the precision it tells you it has. I also have a bridge to sell you if you believe that everywhere in your house is exactly XY °F. My room is considerably cooler than my kitchen, with a temperature difference of as much as 10 °C, especially when I am cooking multiple dishes. If I open my back door in said kitchen, then the temperature rapidly and noticeably plummets, even if several of the gas hobs are on. You discuss 'precision', but then you don't take the next step of realising that any precision comes with a built-in uncertainty, and the 'human feel' of temperature has a massive uncertainty of as much as ±7 °C—depending on, as the other commenter said, wind, humidity, shade, and internal body temperature. I've been raised entirely in a metric country, and have never used degrees Fahrenheit. It was a complete novelty for me when I was younger, and in many ways still is. It is a matter of 'what is more intuitive'. Room temperature is 25 °C, human body temperature is 36 °C, a fever is about 38 °C, it is freezing outside when it is 0 °C or below, and water boils at 100 °C.
- volemo 3y ago
  I've heard this argument many time and personally do not understand. The ambient temperature is such a subjective thing, so many things affect it besides absolute temperature: wind, sunlight, humidity. And it changes so fast too. I don't think I even need the precision of Celsius, I don't get the necessity of twice the precision of Fahrenheit. And sure, cmiller1, the reference points are arbitrary in Celsius, so are they in Fahrenheit. At least in Celsius the zero point could provide useful information: I know when it's slightly higher than 0˚C there would be mud, when lower — icy roads. (And it isn't really affected by the elevation — ~0.01˚C in the whole range of liveable pressures.) But that's, I believe, irrelevant: I have intuitive understanding of -17˚C or 37˚C without it being a round number, the same way you know what's 32˚F.

lrasinen 3y ago

100 F is hardly a temperature that could kill you, unless you completely neglect hydration. But not drinking will kill you happily at lower temperatures. Also, living in a climate where winter temperatures often hover around the freezing point, you develop a healthy interest in it. As an example: If it's been a few days below 0 C, and then it warms to 3 C, the snow on the sidewalks will have compressed to ice whose top layer will now melt and create absolutely lethal walking conditions. Or if it freezes after having sleet conditions (0-4 C maybe), you get this craggy ice that's not as slippery but is uneven and thus a hazard in its own way. Also very miserable for bicycles. Anders Celsius was a Swede. He knew.

cmiller1 3y ago
100 F will absolutely kill you at 100% humidity.
- lrasinen 3y ago
  Granted. But such conditions are rare and localized. When looking for extreme dew point values, I found this statement: "The highest dew point ever recorded was 35 °C, or 95 °F. This occurred on 8th July, 2003, in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. This happened because the air temperature was 42 °C, or 108 °F, and the relative humidity was 68.5 %." So tropical latitudes might care about temperature / dew point near those numbers, Northern Europe and friends spend their time worrying about freezing.

mikhailfranco 3y ago

The original post reads like satire. I assume your post is also sarcastic, or at least tongue-in-cheek. Fahrenheit is the most insane unit ever created. It is a snapshot of two random temperatures that just happened to be lowest temp easily achieved in 1724, and human body temperature (not a constant LOL), which he perversely assigned 90, not 100. Even acres seem to be derived from ploughing. I'm a farm boy, so I can relate to that, but I bet no city dweller has any vision of an acre in their mind's eye. Even a farm boy like me has trouble converting acres to sq. miles or sq. feet.

briHass 3y ago

It also gives you much more resolution, in integers, over the range a human is likely to experience. For something like a home thermostat, 71F, 72F, and 73F can easily be destinguished by feel and represented as a 2 digit number. Doing the same in C means rounding and losing steps or forcing you to deal with decimals, which people generally avoid.

delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
Your thermostat is probably lying to you—its sensor probably doesn't have the precision it tells you it has. I also have a bridge to sell you if you believe that everywhere in your house is exactly XY °F. My room is considerably cooler than my kitchen, with a temperature difference of as much as 10 °C, especially when I am cooking multiple dishes. If I open my back door in said kitchen, then the temperature rapidly and noticeably plummets, even if several of the gas hobs are on. You discuss 'precision', but then you don't take the next step of realising that any precision comes with a built-in uncertainty, and the 'human feel' of temperature has a massive uncertainty of as much as ±7 °C—depending on, as the other commenter said, wind, humidity, shade, and internal body temperature. I've been raised entirely in a metric country, and have never used degrees Fahrenheit. It was a complete novelty for me when I was younger, and in many ways still is. It is a matter of 'what is more intuitive'. Room temperature is 25 °C, human body temperature is 36 °C, a fever is about 38 °C, it is freezing outside when it is 0 °C or below, and water boils at 100 °C.
volemo 3y ago
I've heard this argument many time and personally do not understand. The ambient temperature is such a subjective thing, so many things affect it besides absolute temperature: wind, sunlight, humidity. And it changes so fast too. I don't think I even need the precision of Celsius, I don't get the necessity of twice the precision of Fahrenheit. And sure, cmiller1, the reference points are arbitrary in Celsius, so are they in Fahrenheit. At least in Celsius the zero point could provide useful information: I know when it's slightly higher than 0˚C there would be mud, when lower — icy roads. (And it isn't really affected by the elevation — ~0.01˚C in the whole range of liveable pressures.) But that's, I believe, irrelevant: I have intuitive understanding of -17˚C or 37˚C without it being a round number, the same way you know what's 32˚F.