4 ms·

I was shocked that such a scientific station is using Fahrenheit to measure the temperature of the water

by ta1243 2y ago

defrost 2y ago
It's a blog for general US public reading, I'm inclined to think the seriousstuff is all Celsius and SI units and Fahrenheit is used in the social write ups so than regular folk in the US know what the tempretures are.
- ta1243 2y ago
  It's the photos that confused me. They weren't even dual-marked in C and F, just in F
  - defrost 2y ago
    Fair point, but as SoftTalker observed in a peer comment there are two types of equipment, industrial grade HVAC heating cooling gear sourced from the US for living | working environmental control ( F ) and actual scientific equipment ( not shown in the photos I saw which were all of HVAC type gear and marked in F ).
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- cesarb 2y ago
  > I'm inclined to think the serious stuff is all Celsius and SI units and Fahrenheit is used in the social write ups [...] There are two photos in this article which show thermometers (search for "Temperature of the "), which clearly are in Fahrenheit (the scale goes from 20 to over 140, which would be from "comfortable room temperature" to "beyond boiling at normal pressure" if it were in Celsius), and both having a printed label "EACH LINE: 2°f" (with lowercase F for some reason) glued below them. So, at least for this water treatment plant, it seems to be using Fahrenheit for the instrumentation.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Application-specific industrial instrumentation probably sourced from USA. I'm sure all their scientific instruments are in Celsius.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
Fahrenheit is based on what a human body finds hazardous, and this is a life support system for humans. It's the right tool for the job. I doubt they're using Fahrenheit in contexts that don't benefit from a human bias.
- Mumps 2y ago
  This never made sense to me. What "feels" special about 32, or 98, or 212? If anything this argument is way more applicable to Celsius (0 noteworthy, 100 noteworthy). I once read that it had to do with making a calibrated scale (divisions of 2) - and that felt like it held water - to me.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    I don't know the history, but I have to imagine that it was motivated by this sort of reasoning: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/4j8nq2/fahrenheit_celsius_and_kelvin/ https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/4j8nq2/fahrenheit_ce... I don't defend any other imperial units. Bring on the kilograms, meters, and liters. But when I saw that thermostats in Europe change by increments of 0.5 my gut reaction was "this is silly".
    - ta1243 2y ago
      The sauna I was in last night was over 90C so I'm not sure "dead" would apply. I've seen thermostats set to F move by 2F each increment which felt "a bit silly" to me
ano-ther 2y ago
It’s a US government operated facility, so this is not too surprising. Also, most equipment (especially things like plumbing) will be from US suppliers and that will just be easier to procure by the inch.
p3rls 2y ago
Wait until you find out what PSI means
- yencabulator 2y ago
  Wait till you find out that Europe measures e.g. car tire pressures in bars.
joshvm 2y ago
It's an American station built by American contractors for Americans. I say this with great fondness as a non-American working there. I spent a week trying to find a specific size of metric screw, the pain is real. Let's first be clear that most of the station is not "scientific" - it's infrastructure that people live in. The people that maintain the building are familiar with the Imperial system and so it makes sense that those units are used. The materials and parts that are used to repair the station are sourced from US companies (by law in a lot of cases). For example if you do daily rounds at the power plant, all the temp measurements from the engines are in F. Basically all the inline fluid thermometers read F. All the interior thermostats are in F. I'm pretty sure all the dimensions for the building are specified in feet. So the units for water temperature don't matter. We don't do water research here (beyond what our tech does to calculate treatment quantities), we just need a reliable and potable supply. Meteorology does report in metric - METARs are a standard format. Though then you get into aviation where feet are also universally used for altitude... But the telescopes? Oh man. Imperial hardware all over the place, but at least we use Kelvin for cryogenics.

I was shocked that such a scientific station is using Fahrenheit to measure the temperature of the water

by ta1243 2y ago

I was shocked that such a scientific station is using Fahrenheit to measure the temperature of the water

It's a blog for general US public reading, I'm inclined to think the seriousstuff is all Celsius and SI units and Fahrenheit is used in the social write ups so than regular folk in the US know what the tempretures are.

ta1243 2y ago
It's the photos that confused me. They weren't even dual-marked in C and F, just in F
- defrost 2y ago
  Fair point, but as SoftTalker observed in a peer comment there are two types of equipment, industrial grade HVAC heating cooling gear sourced from the US for living | working environmental control ( F ) and actual scientific equipment ( not shown in the photos I saw which were all of HVAC type gear and marked in F ).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
cesarb 2y ago
> I'm inclined to think the serious stuff is all Celsius and SI units and Fahrenheit is used in the social write ups [...] There are two photos in this article which show thermometers (search for "Temperature of the "), which clearly are in Fahrenheit (the scale goes from 20 to over 140, which would be from "comfortable room temperature" to "beyond boiling at normal pressure" if it were in Celsius), and both having a printed label "EACH LINE: 2°f" (with lowercase F for some reason) glued below them. So, at least for this water treatment plant, it seems to be using Fahrenheit for the instrumentation.
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Application-specific industrial instrumentation probably sourced from USA. I'm sure all their scientific instruments are in Celsius.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

Fahrenheit is based on what a human body finds hazardous, and this is a life support system for humans. It's the right tool for the job. I doubt they're using Fahrenheit in contexts that don't benefit from a human bias.

Mumps 2y ago
This never made sense to me. What "feels" special about 32, or 98, or 212? If anything this argument is way more applicable to Celsius (0 noteworthy, 100 noteworthy). I once read that it had to do with making a calibrated scale (divisions of 2) - and that felt like it held water - to me.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  I don't know the history, but I have to imagine that it was motivated by this sort of reasoning: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/4j8nq2/fahrenheit_celsius_and_kelvin/ https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/4j8nq2/fahrenheit_ce... I don't defend any other imperial units. Bring on the kilograms, meters, and liters. But when I saw that thermostats in Europe change by increments of 0.5 my gut reaction was "this is silly".
  - ta1243 2y ago
    The sauna I was in last night was over 90C so I'm not sure "dead" would apply. I've seen thermostats set to F move by 2F each increment which felt "a bit silly" to me

ano-ther 2y ago

It’s a US government operated facility, so this is not too surprising. Also, most equipment (especially things like plumbing) will be from US suppliers and that will just be easier to procure by the inch.

p3rls 2y ago

Wait until you find out what PSI means

yencabulator 2y ago
Wait till you find out that Europe measures e.g. car tire pressures in bars.

joshvm 2y ago

It's an American station built by American contractors for Americans. I say this with great fondness as a non-American working there. I spent a week trying to find a specific size of metric screw, the pain is real. Let's first be clear that most of the station is not "scientific" - it's infrastructure that people live in. The people that maintain the building are familiar with the Imperial system and so it makes sense that those units are used. The materials and parts that are used to repair the station are sourced from US companies (by law in a lot of cases). For example if you do daily rounds at the power plant, all the temp measurements from the engines are in F. Basically all the inline fluid thermometers read F. All the interior thermostats are in F. I'm pretty sure all the dimensions for the building are specified in feet. So the units for water temperature don't matter. We don't do water research here (beyond what our tech does to calculate treatment quantities), we just need a reliable and potable supply. Meteorology does report in metric - METARs are a standard format. Though then you get into aviation where feet are also universally used for altitude... But the telescopes? Oh man. Imperial hardware all over the place, but at least we use Kelvin for cryogenics.