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Temperature is the worst metric unit to pick for this. Both the imperial and metric versions of temperature are completely arbitrary. It's really baffling to

by cogman10 10mo ago

Temperature is the worst metric unit to pick for this. Both the imperial and metric versions of temperature are completely arbitrary. It's really baffling to me that THIS is the one that most people talking about metric superiority cling to. Where metric shines is when you talk about subunits like mg vs g vs kg. You don't do that with temperature almost ever. So so what if water boils at 212F vs 100C? Pinning 100 at the boiling point of pure water at standard atmospheric pressure is every bit as arbitrary as Fs original 100F pin to the internal body temperature of a horse. Otherwise I agree with you. I just wish stronger arguments would be made. Measuring distance, speed, weight, volume in metric makes a lot more sense and is more intuitive. It's easy to relate 300mL to 1L. or 1cm to 1m to 1km. And that is where most of the value of metric comes from. The fact that we basically never think in terms of kC or mC is why using temperature is very weak.

mitthrowaway2 10mo ago
(A standard horse in standard health, of course).
- cogman10 10mo ago
  I mean, say what you will, but a horse is likely to have a similar body temperature regardless their location on the planet. The same can't be said of boiling water. Pretty normal elevations make pretty big changes in water boiling temperature. You can ultimately also average out temperatures for multiple horses to get pretty close to that 100F. A better pin would have been something like the melting point of Gallium. Something that hardly changes with a change of pressure.
johnnyanmac 10mo ago
>Pinning 100 at the boiling point of pure water at standard atmospheric pressure is every bit as arbitrary as Fs original 100F pin to the internal body temperature of a horse. I mean, every unit is arbiturary. But we need to pick something. I don't have any love for either, but F is the easiest to pick fun at when none of the standard temperatures make any sense. 32 for freezing water, 212 for boiing, 98.6 for human temperature? The 0 and 100 scale were based on the freezing point of some particular saltwater mixture and 90 degrees for human body temperature (which was corrected and then the scale updated to get to the modern temperature).
- cogman10 10mo ago
  100 was the internal body temperature of a horse. The thought for both the brine and horse was that both were more stable temperatures than something like a human and pure water. As you can imagine, it was harder to obtain pure water and back then they noticed water freezing at various temperatures.
- BugsJustFindMe 10mo ago
  > none of the standard temperatures make any sense. 32 for freezing water, 212 for boiling, 98.6 for human temperature? None of those attributes matter much. F is great for talking about the weather in the US, where 0 to 100 is approximately the experienced range through the year. You don't need to know the exact boiling or freezing points of water to know how cold or hot you'll be each day.

mitthrowaway2 10mo ago

(A standard horse in standard health, of course).

cogman10 10mo ago
I mean, say what you will, but a horse is likely to have a similar body temperature regardless their location on the planet. The same can't be said of boiling water. Pretty normal elevations make pretty big changes in water boiling temperature. You can ultimately also average out temperatures for multiple horses to get pretty close to that 100F. A better pin would have been something like the melting point of Gallium. Something that hardly changes with a change of pressure.

johnnyanmac 10mo ago

>Pinning 100 at the boiling point of pure water at standard atmospheric pressure is every bit as arbitrary as Fs original 100F pin to the internal body temperature of a horse. I mean, every unit is arbiturary. But we need to pick something. I don't have any love for either, but F is the easiest to pick fun at when none of the standard temperatures make any sense. 32 for freezing water, 212 for boiing, 98.6 for human temperature? The 0 and 100 scale were based on the freezing point of some particular saltwater mixture and 90 degrees for human body temperature (which was corrected and then the scale updated to get to the modern temperature).

cogman10 10mo ago
100 was the internal body temperature of a horse. The thought for both the brine and horse was that both were more stable temperatures than something like a human and pure water. As you can imagine, it was harder to obtain pure water and back then they noticed water freezing at various temperatures.
BugsJustFindMe 10mo ago
> none of the standard temperatures make any sense. 32 for freezing water, 212 for boiling, 98.6 for human temperature? None of those attributes matter much. F is great for talking about the weather in the US, where 0 to 100 is approximately the experienced range through the year. You don't need to know the exact boiling or freezing points of water to know how cold or hot you'll be each day.