4 ms·

It makes just as much intuitive sense in Fahrenheit as it does in centigrade.

perching_aix 1y ago
Why? The slope of the Fahrenheit scale is different to the Celsius and Kelvin scales, but the slope of the latter two does match.
- meindnoch 1y ago
  Ok. Then please explain what % does the temperature rise when going from 0 Celsius to 5 Celsius!
  - stephencanon 1y ago
    Or -1 to 1 Celsius, for that matter.
    - chihuahua 1y ago
      Obviously it's -200%, which means that going from -1C to 1C is a drastic decrease in warmness!
- azernik 1y ago
  The slope of the Fahrenheit scale matches that of the Rankine scale. I would still say that the in the Rankine scale percentage increases make sense, and Fahrenheit changes to not. The thing that matters isn't the slope, but the zero point; "X% farther from absolute zero" is a useful measurement, "X% farther from an arbitrary zero point" is not. Especially when negative or zero temperatures are involved.
- lolinder 1y ago
  The slope of the scales has no bearing on whether percentages are meaningful here. The problem with both systems when it comes to percentages is that neither system has 0 set to a natural 0. This leads to an entirely arbitrary point on the scale where decreases in the unit will approach a 100% difference and then suddenly start decreasing again. If anything Fahrenheit should be less insane because at least the artificial 0 is likely to stay much further away in the data they're quantifying so the percentages stay reasonable.
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    Ah right, okay, that makes sense.
- detourdog 1y ago
  Early measurements were done by individuals and they were idiosyncratic to the process of discovery/calibration. Kelvin is refined measurements used to relate to a wider scale of temperatures. Celsius is a metric human scale subset of Kelvin.
detourdog 1y ago
Reading this quote made me finally realize why the name centigrade exists. It’s a gradient scale of 100.
- tailspin2019 1y ago
  Reading this comment about the previous quote made me finally realize why the name centigrade exists.
tim333 1y ago
Maybe because I was brought up with centigrade it makes more sense to me. The centigrade number is how far you are from water freezing. If it goes up 100% then you are twice as far away. I'm not aware that doubling the fahrenheit number has a similar easy to understand meaning?
- ars 1y ago
  > The centigrade number is how far you are from water freezing The Fahrenheit scale is how far your are from your own body temperature. It was designed that 100 is the temperature of a human. (Adjusted later to 98.6 due to inaccuracies.) 0 was designed to be as cold as you can get with ice and salt (also ended up being slightly inaccurate). > Maybe because I was brought up with centigrade it makes more sense to me. Yup. People brought up on Fahrenheit think it is superior. For temperature neither argument is objectively better. (In contrast to imperial distance measurement with non-powers of 10 and factions, where there are good arguments against it, with temperature both scales are ultimately arbitrary.)
  - skissane 1y ago
    > For temperature neither argument is objectively better. I think Celsius is objectively better in that: (1) its endpoints–freezing and boiling point of water–are more natural / less arbitrary / more fundamental than Fahrenheit's–coldest temperature you can reach with salt and ice to average human body temperature. Water is a fundamental substance to all known life; the freezing point of pure water is much more fundamental than the freezing point of a water + NaCl mixture (actually apparently Fahrenheit used ammonium chloride not sodium chloride, which is arguably even more arbitrary than sodium chloride would be). If you imagine some extraterrestrial civilisation independently invents a temperature scale, they'd be more likely to come up with something close to Celsius than something close to Fahrenheit (2) while both scales contain some error in that the nominal value of their endpoints differs from the real value, the error is greater for Fahrenheit (3) According to Wikipedia, Fahrenheit didn't have 100 degrees between his two endpoints, he originally had 90 then increased it to 96 – given base 10 is the standard number base used by humans, 100 divisions is less arbitrary than 90 or 96 (4) nowadays, all other temperature scales are officially defined in terms of Kelvin – and Celsius has a simpler relationship to Kelvin than Fahrenheit does (for Celsius it is purely an additive offset, for Fahrenheit it involves both addition and multiplication) (5) conforming to the global standard is objectively better than sticking with an alternative which lacks clearcut advantges

Why? The slope of the Fahrenheit scale is different to the Celsius and Kelvin scales, but the slope of the latter two does match.

meindnoch 1y ago
Ok. Then please explain what % does the temperature rise when going from 0 Celsius to 5 Celsius!
- stephencanon 1y ago
  Or -1 to 1 Celsius, for that matter.
  - chihuahua 1y ago
    Obviously it's -200%, which means that going from -1C to 1C is a drastic decrease in warmness!
azernik 1y ago
The slope of the Fahrenheit scale matches that of the Rankine scale. I would still say that the in the Rankine scale percentage increases make sense, and Fahrenheit changes to not. The thing that matters isn't the slope, but the zero point; "X% farther from absolute zero" is a useful measurement, "X% farther from an arbitrary zero point" is not. Especially when negative or zero temperatures are involved.
lolinder 1y ago
The slope of the scales has no bearing on whether percentages are meaningful here. The problem with both systems when it comes to percentages is that neither system has 0 set to a natural 0. This leads to an entirely arbitrary point on the scale where decreases in the unit will approach a 100% difference and then suddenly start decreasing again. If anything Fahrenheit should be less insane because at least the artificial 0 is likely to stay much further away in the data they're quantifying so the percentages stay reasonable.
- perching_aix 1y ago
  Ah right, okay, that makes sense.
detourdog 1y ago
Early measurements were done by individuals and they were idiosyncratic to the process of discovery/calibration. Kelvin is refined measurements used to relate to a wider scale of temperatures. Celsius is a metric human scale subset of Kelvin.

detourdog 1y ago

Reading this quote made me finally realize why the name centigrade exists. It’s a gradient scale of 100.

tailspin2019 1y ago
Reading this comment about the previous quote made me finally realize why the name centigrade exists.

tim333 1y ago

Maybe because I was brought up with centigrade it makes more sense to me. The centigrade number is how far you are from water freezing. If it goes up 100% then you are twice as far away. I'm not aware that doubling the fahrenheit number has a similar easy to understand meaning?

ars 1y ago
> The centigrade number is how far you are from water freezing The Fahrenheit scale is how far your are from your own body temperature. It was designed that 100 is the temperature of a human. (Adjusted later to 98.6 due to inaccuracies.) 0 was designed to be as cold as you can get with ice and salt (also ended up being slightly inaccurate). > Maybe because I was brought up with centigrade it makes more sense to me. Yup. People brought up on Fahrenheit think it is superior. For temperature neither argument is objectively better. (In contrast to imperial distance measurement with non-powers of 10 and factions, where there are good arguments against it, with temperature both scales are ultimately arbitrary.)
- skissane 1y ago
  > For temperature neither argument is objectively better. I think Celsius is objectively better in that: (1) its endpoints–freezing and boiling point of water–are more natural / less arbitrary / more fundamental than Fahrenheit's–coldest temperature you can reach with salt and ice to average human body temperature. Water is a fundamental substance to all known life; the freezing point of pure water is much more fundamental than the freezing point of a water + NaCl mixture (actually apparently Fahrenheit used ammonium chloride not sodium chloride, which is arguably even more arbitrary than sodium chloride would be). If you imagine some extraterrestrial civilisation independently invents a temperature scale, they'd be more likely to come up with something close to Celsius than something close to Fahrenheit (2) while both scales contain some error in that the nominal value of their endpoints differs from the real value, the error is greater for Fahrenheit (3) According to Wikipedia, Fahrenheit didn't have 100 degrees between his two endpoints, he originally had 90 then increased it to 96 – given base 10 is the standard number base used by humans, 100 divisions is less arbitrary than 90 or 96 (4) nowadays, all other temperature scales are officially defined in terms of Kelvin – and Celsius has a simpler relationship to Kelvin than Fahrenheit does (for Celsius it is purely an additive offset, for Fahrenheit it involves both addition and multiplication) (5) conforming to the global standard is objectively better than sticking with an alternative which lacks clearcut advantges