5 ms·

> the useful scale of Fahrenheit is far superior 0-100 versus 0-32. Well, first of all, I'm not sure why you're defining those scales as the "useful" ones. The

> the useful scale of Fahrenheit is far superior 0-100 versus 0-32. Well, first of all, I'm not sure why you're defining those scales as the "useful" ones. They don't even equate to each other. But why are you arbitrarily using 100 as the end of your Fahrenheit scale? Just so you can declare it 'Metric-y'? If you read his paper, Fahrenheit's scale is actually 0-96.

ericmay 9mo ago
Well even 0-96 would be better, but I think 0-100 scales are more useful. Temperatures in most places are within those bounds and it's like a test you are graded on. You get a 0 on the test, that's really cold. You get a 100 - smoking hot. I'm not 100% sure of the normal upper/lower bounds in everyday life for most people on the planet for Celsius, but let's say it's 0-32. It' just feels weird to me to be operating on that scale versus 0-100 where I see in every day life from battery percentages to test scores. > Just so you can declare it 'Metric-y'? In part, yea. But I generally just prefer the Imperial system because of its practicality in everyday life and because it's fun and weird and historical in a way that Metric isn't.
- nearbuy 9mo ago
  I think you're saying that where you live, the weather is usually between 0 and 100°F. Aside from the fact that outdoor temperatures aren't in this range everywhere, we don't only use temperature for weather. 100°F is warm to the touch, not smoking hot. 100°C is boiling hot. You sip tea at 60°C, and brew it at 80° to 100°C depending on the type. You cook chicken to an internal 74°C. A hair dryer blows air around 50°C. All of these are outside of 0-100°F. > I generally just prefer the Imperial system because of its practicality in everyday life Funny, most of us much prefer metric mainly for its practicality in everyday life. Edit: I'll add that aesthetically, 0°C is a really nice zero point for weather. Above 0° is the temperature that the snow starts melting, below is when the streets and ground starts freezing. Which side of 0°C you're on is the biggest pivot point for what it's like outside of any temperature.
  - ericmay 9mo ago
    > I think you're saying that where you live, the weather is usually between 0 and 100°F. Well let me clarify, what I was saying is that where everybody lives the temperatures tend to be within that range, which is why I think it's a superior measurement for temperature related to the weather - again just additional clarification which was missing maybe from earlier comments. Once you arrive at the point where you're measuring various things, I'm not sure it matters what scale you use so long as the values align as you expect. In other words, I don't really care whether I'm using 212 for the temperature at which water boils or 100 - it's just an association of values to action. You can swap between grams, ounces, pounds, milligrams, or kilos with your scale and it's not that important for day-to-day life. In terms of measuring temperature of things, like, say when chicken is cooked, I'm not really sure F or C is more practical. It's just different numbers.
    - nearbuy 9mo ago
      I live in one of the most populated cities in North America. The temperature on Saturday is forecasted to go down to -18°F (feels like -29°F with wind chill). It's not at all unusual for temperatures to be below 0°F in winter in much of the world. > Once you arrive at the point where you're measuring various things, I'm not sure it matters what scale you use so long as the values align as you expect. You can't have it both ways. The entire advantage you proposed for Fahrenheit is that the outside temperature is often between 0 and 100. It's a tiny aesthetic advantage that doesn't even work very well because 0°F isn't actually the coldest temperature we get and 100°F isn't the warmest. You're right it doesn't matter that much if water boils at 100° or 212°. It's just different numbers. But by the same token, it doesn't matter if the warmest weather is about 100°F or 40°C. It's just a different number. At least 0°C and 100°C are actual points that mean something and are relevant to everyday life, while 0°F isn't really anything. As I said before, the weather outside changes more at 0°C than at any other temperature.
      - wahern 9mo ago
        The steelman argument for Farenheit as it is, not necessarily the motivations behind it, has been fleshed out here: http://lethalletham.com/posts/fahrenheit.html http://lethalletham.com/posts/fahrenheit.html TL;DR: "The remarkable result here is that 0℉ is nearly exactly the 1st percentile of daily lows, and 100℉ is nearly exactly the 99th percentile of daily highs." NB: The context is the continental US.
- pibaker 9mo ago
  Do you think the overwhelming majority of human kinds find it weird that 30 degrees is hot and 15 degrees is comfortable? (Hint: they probably find it weird that water does not freeze at "zero") You are entitled to your subjective experience, but keep in mind other subjective experiences exist.
- samus 9mo ago
  > Temperatures in most places are within those bounds That seems to be a quite arbitrary and insufficient criterion. As soon as I start cooking or preparing a warm drink I already step way outside these boundaries. In defense of the relevance of the Celsius scale in daily life: its endpoints represent critical temperatures of the most important liquid to life on Earth at ~1 bar. And at temperatures of 0°C or less I stand at danger of not just hypothermia, but frostbite. > it's [..] historical in a way that Metric isn't. How so? Celsius was proposed merely 18 years (1742) after Fahrenheit (1724).
  - ericmay 9mo ago
    > How so? Celsius was proposed merely 18 years (1742) after Fahrenheit (1724). Sorry, I was attempting however poorly to reference the Imperial system historically, not Celsius versus Fahrenheit there which may have been confusing on my part. > In defense of the relevance of the Celsius scale in daily life: its endpoints represent critical temperatures of the most important liquid to life on Earth at ~1 bar. And at temperatures of 0°C or less I stand at danger of not just hypothermia, but frostbite. Right, incredibly important. I guess I would say I prefer Fahrenheit as a measurement of air temperature, if that would be more sensible to understanding my own personal preference. When I walk outside unless it's really cold I don't ever think about what temperature water freezes or boils, I want to know whether I am going to sweat, whether I'm in California, or whether I'm going to freeze my butt off when it's 14 degrees out.
    - samus 9mo ago
      > When I walk outside unless it's really cold I don't ever think about what temperature water freezes or boils, I want to know whether I am going to sweat, whether I'm in California, or whether I'm going to freeze my butt off when it's 14 degrees out. In either system that's just a matter of remembering a few numbers. And it anyway doesn't give the full picture since humidity and wind speed play a huge role in how it actually feels like and what clothing one should wear.
    - tpm 9mo ago
      One thing that is great about 0°C representing the freezing of water is that at that point you know there will be ice on the paved surfaces (unless they were dry, cleaned or salted).
toolslive 9mo ago
As an engineer, you should not even use temperature at all. All thermodynamic formulas simplify (a lot) if you use the inverse temperature.
- adrian_b 9mo ago
  You are indeed right that in most numeric computations using the inverse temperature, a.k.a. the reciprocal temperature, is more convenient. Nevertheless, there are many important quantities which are proportional to temperature, e.g. pressure, internal energy, voltage generated by a bandgap reference and so on. Because of this, there are many cases, especially in qualitative reasoning, when using temperature is more convenient than using its inverse. This is similar to waves, where in most numeric computations wave-number and frequency are more convenient, but there are also many cases, e.g. when reasoning about resonance frequencies or stationary waves, when using wave-length and periodic time is more convenient. Another example is in electrical circuits, where for some problems using impedance and resistance is more convenient, while for others using admittance and conductance is more convenient. Perhaps one would need a simpler name for reciprocal temperature, to facilitate its use wherever this makes sense. However, when implementing a physical model in a program, where one should always define distinct types for each kind of physical quantity, using a short type name like "RecTemp" would not stand out among the many abbreviations typically used in programs.
  - toolslive 9mo ago
    I'm just saying integrating over a temperature range with T in the denominator is annoying, while it doesn't have to be.
- Yossarrian22 9mo ago
  Good old thermodynamic beta
tzs 9mo ago
The things that make the metric system superior to prior systems are: • Using a uniform set of prefixes to designate multiples and divisions of the base units. Having one unit of say, volume (the liter), and then using prefixes when we need smaller or larger units is way better than having cups, pints, quarts, gallons, pecks, and many more. • Having those prefixes mean powers of 10. That fits in well with our use of decimal arithmetic. It is the first one that is most important. For temperature there's nothing actually 'Metric-y' about Celsius (or Kelvin), because in most cases people don't use multiples or divisions of the base unit. This includes in science and engineering. An astronomer would say (and write in their paper) that a star has a temperature of 7000 K, not 7 kiloK. They would say a neutron star has a core temperature of 100 trillion K, not 100 TK or 100 teraK. At the low end there is more use of prefixes. The scientists that work near absolute 0 do often use millikelvin and microkelvin. They also often don't. Both 10^-2 Kelvin and 10 mK would usually be acceptable. A metric system with the same meter, liter, and gram as the current one but that had picked F and R instead of C and K would work fine and be just as 'Metric-y' as the current metric system.
- jrm4 9mo ago
  What precisely is "better" about that? It's more predictable over -- some things that you don't know how they're going to scale? Again, the general thrust of "imperial" is better -- base your units on "utility of the most people using them the most for real life things" Do whatever you want for distances between stars, but no, walking off a room in "feet" can't be beat.
  - tzs 9mo ago
    To pace off something in feet most people actually try to pace in yards and multiply by 3 if they want to express the result in feet. They could just as easily pace in meters. What is better with metric is the consistent way to name multiples and divisions of the base units. Metric uses power of 10 prefixes but another power could work fine. Power of 2 for example actually fits well with Imperial volume measurements, where a quart is 1/4 gallon, a pint is 1/2 quart, 1 cup is 1/2 pint, a fluid ounce is 1/8 cup, and a tablespoon is 1/2 a fluid ounce. Just make some prefixes that mean 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128, and 1/256 and use those with gallon instead of having separate names for everything, and use the same prefixes with yards when you need a unit smaller than a yard and you'd be off to a good start. Add some prefixes that mean 2x, 4x, 8x, etc too. Yards and gallons don't have to be the base units. Could be feet and cups or anything else. The key is prefixes to get bigger or smaller units instead of naming those others units, and using the same prefixes across unit types.

ericmay 9mo ago

Well even 0-96 would be better, but I think 0-100 scales are more useful. Temperatures in most places are within those bounds and it's like a test you are graded on. You get a 0 on the test, that's really cold. You get a 100 - smoking hot. I'm not 100% sure of the normal upper/lower bounds in everyday life for most people on the planet for Celsius, but let's say it's 0-32. It' just feels weird to me to be operating on that scale versus 0-100 where I see in every day life from battery percentages to test scores. > Just so you can declare it 'Metric-y'? In part, yea. But I generally just prefer the Imperial system because of its practicality in everyday life and because it's fun and weird and historical in a way that Metric isn't.

nearbuy 9mo ago
I think you're saying that where you live, the weather is usually between 0 and 100°F. Aside from the fact that outdoor temperatures aren't in this range everywhere, we don't only use temperature for weather. 100°F is warm to the touch, not smoking hot. 100°C is boiling hot. You sip tea at 60°C, and brew it at 80° to 100°C depending on the type. You cook chicken to an internal 74°C. A hair dryer blows air around 50°C. All of these are outside of 0-100°F. > I generally just prefer the Imperial system because of its practicality in everyday life Funny, most of us much prefer metric mainly for its practicality in everyday life. Edit: I'll add that aesthetically, 0°C is a really nice zero point for weather. Above 0° is the temperature that the snow starts melting, below is when the streets and ground starts freezing. Which side of 0°C you're on is the biggest pivot point for what it's like outside of any temperature.
- ericmay 9mo ago
  > I think you're saying that where you live, the weather is usually between 0 and 100°F. Well let me clarify, what I was saying is that where everybody lives the temperatures tend to be within that range, which is why I think it's a superior measurement for temperature related to the weather - again just additional clarification which was missing maybe from earlier comments. Once you arrive at the point where you're measuring various things, I'm not sure it matters what scale you use so long as the values align as you expect. In other words, I don't really care whether I'm using 212 for the temperature at which water boils or 100 - it's just an association of values to action. You can swap between grams, ounces, pounds, milligrams, or kilos with your scale and it's not that important for day-to-day life. In terms of measuring temperature of things, like, say when chicken is cooked, I'm not really sure F or C is more practical. It's just different numbers.
  - nearbuy 9mo ago
    I live in one of the most populated cities in North America. The temperature on Saturday is forecasted to go down to -18°F (feels like -29°F with wind chill). It's not at all unusual for temperatures to be below 0°F in winter in much of the world. > Once you arrive at the point where you're measuring various things, I'm not sure it matters what scale you use so long as the values align as you expect. You can't have it both ways. The entire advantage you proposed for Fahrenheit is that the outside temperature is often between 0 and 100. It's a tiny aesthetic advantage that doesn't even work very well because 0°F isn't actually the coldest temperature we get and 100°F isn't the warmest. You're right it doesn't matter that much if water boils at 100° or 212°. It's just different numbers. But by the same token, it doesn't matter if the warmest weather is about 100°F or 40°C. It's just a different number. At least 0°C and 100°C are actual points that mean something and are relevant to everyday life, while 0°F isn't really anything. As I said before, the weather outside changes more at 0°C than at any other temperature.
    - wahern 9mo ago
      The steelman argument for Farenheit as it is, not necessarily the motivations behind it, has been fleshed out here: http://lethalletham.com/posts/fahrenheit.html http://lethalletham.com/posts/fahrenheit.html TL;DR: "The remarkable result here is that 0℉ is nearly exactly the 1st percentile of daily lows, and 100℉ is nearly exactly the 99th percentile of daily highs." NB: The context is the continental US.
pibaker 9mo ago
Do you think the overwhelming majority of human kinds find it weird that 30 degrees is hot and 15 degrees is comfortable? (Hint: they probably find it weird that water does not freeze at "zero") You are entitled to your subjective experience, but keep in mind other subjective experiences exist.
samus 9mo ago
> Temperatures in most places are within those bounds That seems to be a quite arbitrary and insufficient criterion. As soon as I start cooking or preparing a warm drink I already step way outside these boundaries. In defense of the relevance of the Celsius scale in daily life: its endpoints represent critical temperatures of the most important liquid to life on Earth at ~1 bar. And at temperatures of 0°C or less I stand at danger of not just hypothermia, but frostbite. > it's [..] historical in a way that Metric isn't. How so? Celsius was proposed merely 18 years (1742) after Fahrenheit (1724).
- ericmay 9mo ago
  > How so? Celsius was proposed merely 18 years (1742) after Fahrenheit (1724). Sorry, I was attempting however poorly to reference the Imperial system historically, not Celsius versus Fahrenheit there which may have been confusing on my part. > In defense of the relevance of the Celsius scale in daily life: its endpoints represent critical temperatures of the most important liquid to life on Earth at ~1 bar. And at temperatures of 0°C or less I stand at danger of not just hypothermia, but frostbite. Right, incredibly important. I guess I would say I prefer Fahrenheit as a measurement of air temperature, if that would be more sensible to understanding my own personal preference. When I walk outside unless it's really cold I don't ever think about what temperature water freezes or boils, I want to know whether I am going to sweat, whether I'm in California, or whether I'm going to freeze my butt off when it's 14 degrees out.
  - samus 9mo ago
    > When I walk outside unless it's really cold I don't ever think about what temperature water freezes or boils, I want to know whether I am going to sweat, whether I'm in California, or whether I'm going to freeze my butt off when it's 14 degrees out. In either system that's just a matter of remembering a few numbers. And it anyway doesn't give the full picture since humidity and wind speed play a huge role in how it actually feels like and what clothing one should wear.
  - tpm 9mo ago
    One thing that is great about 0°C representing the freezing of water is that at that point you know there will be ice on the paved surfaces (unless they were dry, cleaned or salted).

toolslive 9mo ago

As an engineer, you should not even use temperature at all. All thermodynamic formulas simplify (a lot) if you use the inverse temperature.

adrian_b 9mo ago
You are indeed right that in most numeric computations using the inverse temperature, a.k.a. the reciprocal temperature, is more convenient. Nevertheless, there are many important quantities which are proportional to temperature, e.g. pressure, internal energy, voltage generated by a bandgap reference and so on. Because of this, there are many cases, especially in qualitative reasoning, when using temperature is more convenient than using its inverse. This is similar to waves, where in most numeric computations wave-number and frequency are more convenient, but there are also many cases, e.g. when reasoning about resonance frequencies or stationary waves, when using wave-length and periodic time is more convenient. Another example is in electrical circuits, where for some problems using impedance and resistance is more convenient, while for others using admittance and conductance is more convenient. Perhaps one would need a simpler name for reciprocal temperature, to facilitate its use wherever this makes sense. However, when implementing a physical model in a program, where one should always define distinct types for each kind of physical quantity, using a short type name like "RecTemp" would not stand out among the many abbreviations typically used in programs.
- toolslive 9mo ago
  I'm just saying integrating over a temperature range with T in the denominator is annoying, while it doesn't have to be.
Yossarrian22 9mo ago
Good old thermodynamic beta

tzs 9mo ago

The things that make the metric system superior to prior systems are: • Using a uniform set of prefixes to designate multiples and divisions of the base units. Having one unit of say, volume (the liter), and then using prefixes when we need smaller or larger units is way better than having cups, pints, quarts, gallons, pecks, and many more. • Having those prefixes mean powers of 10. That fits in well with our use of decimal arithmetic. It is the first one that is most important. For temperature there's nothing actually 'Metric-y' about Celsius (or Kelvin), because in most cases people don't use multiples or divisions of the base unit. This includes in science and engineering. An astronomer would say (and write in their paper) that a star has a temperature of 7000 K, not 7 kiloK. They would say a neutron star has a core temperature of 100 trillion K, not 100 TK or 100 teraK. At the low end there is more use of prefixes. The scientists that work near absolute 0 do often use millikelvin and microkelvin. They also often don't. Both 10^-2 Kelvin and 10 mK would usually be acceptable. A metric system with the same meter, liter, and gram as the current one but that had picked F and R instead of C and K would work fine and be just as 'Metric-y' as the current metric system.

jrm4 9mo ago
What precisely is "better" about that? It's more predictable over -- some things that you don't know how they're going to scale? Again, the general thrust of "imperial" is better -- base your units on "utility of the most people using them the most for real life things" Do whatever you want for distances between stars, but no, walking off a room in "feet" can't be beat.
- tzs 9mo ago
  To pace off something in feet most people actually try to pace in yards and multiply by 3 if they want to express the result in feet. They could just as easily pace in meters. What is better with metric is the consistent way to name multiples and divisions of the base units. Metric uses power of 10 prefixes but another power could work fine. Power of 2 for example actually fits well with Imperial volume measurements, where a quart is 1/4 gallon, a pint is 1/2 quart, 1 cup is 1/2 pint, a fluid ounce is 1/8 cup, and a tablespoon is 1/2 a fluid ounce. Just make some prefixes that mean 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128, and 1/256 and use those with gallon instead of having separate names for everything, and use the same prefixes with yards when you need a unit smaller than a yard and you'd be off to a good start. Add some prefixes that mean 2x, 4x, 8x, etc too. Yards and gallons don't have to be the base units. Could be feet and cups or anything else. The key is prefixes to get bigger or smaller units instead of naming those others units, and using the same prefixes across unit types.