6 ms·

this is actually why i like fahrenheit the most... 0F is "really cold" and 100F is "really hot", whereas in celsius 0C is "kind of cold" and 100C is "uninhabita

this is actually why i like fahrenheit the most... 0F is "really cold" and 100F is "really hot", whereas in celsius 0C is "kind of cold" and 100C is "uninhabitable". it makes sense for the 0-100 range to be reserved for temperatures frequently encountered in our habitat as humans i think...

ajmurmann 2mo ago
This makes sense if weather is the main focus. For things like cooking Celsius is great though.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2mo ago
  I am failing to understand why there would be a distinction. They all seem arbitrary set points you learn. 450F vs 230C does not feel like anything gets easier there. Maybe in some highly technical baking there are some nice deltas that appear?
- clickety_clack 2mo ago
  Aren’t you just remembering specific numbers though? Unless you’re trying to boil water unseen so that you can only see a thermometer, the specific 100°C mark isn't that useful.
  - kelnos 2mo ago
    > Aren’t you just remembering specific numbers though? That's the thing about this. It's so tiring for people to argue which temperature scale is "better". Nothing is better or worse. What's "better" is individual, and is just "what you grew up with". Because right, you're just remembering specific numbers, and remembering how those temperatures feel. (Or in the case of cooking, remembering what those temperatures do to your food.) > Unless you’re trying to boil water unseen so that you can only see a thermometer, the specific 100°C mark isn't that useful. Even then it's not that useful, as water doesn't really boil the way most people think it does. (And god forbid you aren't at sea level and aren't at standard temperature and pressure.)
- quickthrowman 2mo ago
  The temperature water boils at is irrelevant when you can just look at it to see if it’s boiling. Any stove will get it hot enough, assuming you have enough energy.
  - kelnos 2mo ago
    Also if you set something to heat water until it's exactly 100C/212F, it probably won't be boiling when it gets there. Some bits of it might be bubbling, but it won't be what we normally think of as "boiling".
wongarsu 2mo ago
Celsius maps nicely to the temperatures observed in a typical Finnish sauna. 100C is among the highest typical sauna temperatures (very relaxing in dry air), and afterwards you cool off with water around 0C Also, having 100C as water temp for black tee and 80 for green tee is nice to remember
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
TylerE 2mo ago
Also for things like hvac temps Celsius is rather too coarse where as 1F is right around the perceivable difference.
- SketchySeaBeast 2mo ago
  There's nothing stopping the use of decimal points for Celsius. Though there's also nothing stopping decimal points in Fahrenheit, the rare instance where an imperial sub-unit doesn't make things go fucky.
al_borland 2mo ago
This has always been my primary argument in favor of Fahrenheit. It makes sense for humans, which is all a majority of the population really cares about. In addition, it's more granular. Sometimes turning the thermostat up or down by 1C could be too much, where 1F is just right. In science and math, I can see where having round numbers for commonly used temperatures would be useful, but if 0C and 100C are the only places that happens, it's not that hard to memorize 2 numbers.
- vagrantJin 2mo ago
  Celcius is pretty intuitive actually. It takes atmospheric pressure into account, Water is pretty abundant on the surface of the planet, and life kinda depends on it. It's a remarkable substance and quite stable. I dont think theres another substance where we can see all three phases with kitchen appliances and still consume it. Equally good for bathing and drinking. I need steam to clean clothes and cook my food. Using water as a benchmark for how we measure temperature is remarkably useful.
  - al_borland 2mo ago
    With all of those examples, the actual temperature doesn’t really matter. For drinking and bathing, people go by feel. In the kitchen, the freezer makes water freeze, and the stovetop will make it boil into steam, but exact temperatures aren’t really relevant here either. The same goes for ironing clothes, the iron just does it. When I think about where explicit temperatures are needed in the home, the oven and thermostat are the two things that come to mind. Water is pretty irrelevant for both of those. For cooking or frying someone may monitor meat or oil temps, but those aren’t water. A hot tub might have an actual temp on it, but those tend to be around 100F, not 100C, as they are meant for humans, not boiling. Water is an amazing liquid, but I still struggle to see how measuring all our temperatures based on it makes sense.
    - QuantumNomad_ 2mo ago
      > When I think about where explicit temperatures are needed in the home, the oven and thermostat are the two things that come to mind. But in that case in what way is for example baking a frozen pizza from the store at 400 to 425 degrees F more relatable/convenient/natural than 200 to 220 degrees C?
clickety_clack 2mo ago
I actually came around to Fahrenheit for the exact same reason. 0°F and 100°F are kind of the top and bottom of the temperature range I’m going to be experiencing and anything outside that is waaay too hot or cold. In Celsius a large portion of people have to flip to negative numbers regularly during the normal year, and everything between 45°C and 100°C is completely unused.
- mmooss 2mo ago
  > 0°F and 100°F are kind of the top and bottom of the temperature range I’m going to be experiencing and anything outside that is waaay too hot or cold. Food, saunas, the weather, a fever, and much more are often over 100F.
- kelnos 2mo ago
  I dunno, temperature doesn't really work like that. As a sibling mentioned, saunas: I can sit in a 190F dry sauna for about a half hour at a time and it feels hot but nice and soothing. But I can only handle a 120F steam room for maybe 10 minutes before I need to get out of there. (Speaking of the dry sauna, if someone pours a bit of water on the stones, it near-instantly feels significantly hotter, even though the temperature hasn't changed.) Put another way, I can sit in a 190F sauna for a half hour, but a half hour out in the sun in, say, Singapore, feels awful to me. 85F where I live now (unusual but happens), in a relatively dry climate, is bearable, while the same temperature where I grew up, in a much more humid place (where it was more common), feels gross and saps my energy. And I can be out snowboarding in 25F weather that's calm and sunny, and feel fine in a medium-weight clothing. But add clouds and wind, at the same temperature, and it's unbearable. And to me, based on the temperatures I usually see, 15F is waaay too cold, and 90F is waaay too hot. Sure, I guess I could round that down to 100F and up to 100F, but that just feels like being arbitrary for the sake of easy numbers.
Paracompact 2mo ago
OF will still kill you faster than 100F, and most folks aren't comfortable at 50F. It inspires the following idea: A nonlinear scale where ~72F is 0, and +X represents the same level of heat discomfort as -X represents cold discomfort.
- 8note 2mo ago
  thats a very location dependent scale. youd still need to include where the discomfort is measured
kccqzy 2mo ago
That’s a biased view that leads to a scale only convenient for people living in particular latitudes. Now talk to someone living near the equator like Singapore, and 0F is unimaginably cold (even 40F is basically unheard of), and 100F is very hot but not extraordinarily so. Then you talk to someone living close to the arctic and the converse is true. All this talk about 0F to 100F being frequently encountered probably reveals your local climate conditions more than it helps define a useful global standard for all humans. We should accept that humans live in more diverse conditions than we intuit and such a scale probably won’t be useful for all.
- cyral 2mo ago
  Now I'm imagining some kind of timezone-like temperature unit that varies around the world, and a "100 things programmers should know about ___" post about all the intricacies and special cases.
  - wiml 2mo ago
    Ooh, and it could shift seasonally so that summer temperatures and winter temperatures can both be in the convenient range. And every locality could shift a different amount and at different times of year according to their local climate. Next, we can look into reforming those pesky mass and volume units…
  - kergonath 2mo ago
    I cannot wait for leap degrees.
- strictnein 2mo ago
  > That’s a biased view that leads to a scale only convenient for people living in particular latitudes I mean, the other option is cool vs dead > We should accept that humans live in more diverse conditions The second most diverse range of temps in the world is smack dab in the middle of the US: South Dakota up through northern Minnesota. Most years that area experiences -40F in the winter and 110F in the summer.
- CrazyStat 2mo ago
Timpanzee 2mo ago
Except 0F being “really cold” and 100F being “really hot” is a personal bias of yours based on where you’ve lived. It’s not true for everyone or everywhere. And even if it were true, it still wouldn’t work. 100F in a dry environment is nice while, in a humid environment, 100F is awful. Same for 0F, a dry and static 0F is fine while a wet and windy 0F is killer.
- strictnein 2mo ago
  What's a "wet and windy" 0F? It's more or less a physical impossibility. 0F air can't hold much moisture. Also, it's not a killer.
  - Timpanzee 2mo ago
    Experience 0F wind in central North America or Central Asia vs 0F wind on the coast and tell me it’s not different. Also, it’s killer, not a killer, as in it sucks a lot.
    - strictnein 2mo ago
      There's still almost no moisture in the air at 0F, no matter if you're on the coast are in the middle of the continent. The air just can't hold that much water at that temp. When it's warm: 50% humidity @ 40C: 25.43 g/kg (grams of water / kg of air) 90% humidity @ 40C: 45.78 g/kg When it's cold: 50% humidity @ -18C (~0F): 0.68 g/kg 90% humidity @ -18C (~0F): 1.23 g/kg There's just not enough there to cause any noticeable affect. But you don't have to take my word for it, the US National Weather Service agrees: https://www.weather.gov/safety/cold-wind-chill-chart https://www.weather.gov/safety/cold-wind-chill-chart "The results of the tests showed that relative humidity was an insignificant weather parameter, affecting the outcome to less than 1 degree"
arjie 2mo ago
Haha, judging by my personal standards, we need to set the zero to 15 C and the 100 to 40 C. My Degrees Arjie are going to be a revolution.

ajmurmann 2mo ago

This makes sense if weather is the main focus. For things like cooking Celsius is great though.

0cf8612b2e1e 2mo ago
I am failing to understand why there would be a distinction. They all seem arbitrary set points you learn. 450F vs 230C does not feel like anything gets easier there. Maybe in some highly technical baking there are some nice deltas that appear?
clickety_clack 2mo ago
Aren’t you just remembering specific numbers though? Unless you’re trying to boil water unseen so that you can only see a thermometer, the specific 100°C mark isn't that useful.
- kelnos 2mo ago
  > Aren’t you just remembering specific numbers though? That's the thing about this. It's so tiring for people to argue which temperature scale is "better". Nothing is better or worse. What's "better" is individual, and is just "what you grew up with". Because right, you're just remembering specific numbers, and remembering how those temperatures feel. (Or in the case of cooking, remembering what those temperatures do to your food.) > Unless you’re trying to boil water unseen so that you can only see a thermometer, the specific 100°C mark isn't that useful. Even then it's not that useful, as water doesn't really boil the way most people think it does. (And god forbid you aren't at sea level and aren't at standard temperature and pressure.)
quickthrowman 2mo ago
The temperature water boils at is irrelevant when you can just look at it to see if it’s boiling. Any stove will get it hot enough, assuming you have enough energy.
- kelnos 2mo ago
  Also if you set something to heat water until it's exactly 100C/212F, it probably won't be boiling when it gets there. Some bits of it might be bubbling, but it won't be what we normally think of as "boiling".

wongarsu 2mo ago

Celsius maps nicely to the temperatures observed in a typical Finnish sauna. 100C is among the highest typical sauna temperatures (very relaxing in dry air), and afterwards you cool off with water around 0C Also, having 100C as water temp for black tee and 80 for green tee is nice to remember

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

TylerE 2mo ago

Also for things like hvac temps Celsius is rather too coarse where as 1F is right around the perceivable difference.

SketchySeaBeast 2mo ago
There's nothing stopping the use of decimal points for Celsius. Though there's also nothing stopping decimal points in Fahrenheit, the rare instance where an imperial sub-unit doesn't make things go fucky.

al_borland 2mo ago

This has always been my primary argument in favor of Fahrenheit. It makes sense for humans, which is all a majority of the population really cares about. In addition, it's more granular. Sometimes turning the thermostat up or down by 1C could be too much, where 1F is just right. In science and math, I can see where having round numbers for commonly used temperatures would be useful, but if 0C and 100C are the only places that happens, it's not that hard to memorize 2 numbers.

vagrantJin 2mo ago
Celcius is pretty intuitive actually. It takes atmospheric pressure into account, Water is pretty abundant on the surface of the planet, and life kinda depends on it. It's a remarkable substance and quite stable. I dont think theres another substance where we can see all three phases with kitchen appliances and still consume it. Equally good for bathing and drinking. I need steam to clean clothes and cook my food. Using water as a benchmark for how we measure temperature is remarkably useful.
- al_borland 2mo ago
  With all of those examples, the actual temperature doesn’t really matter. For drinking and bathing, people go by feel. In the kitchen, the freezer makes water freeze, and the stovetop will make it boil into steam, but exact temperatures aren’t really relevant here either. The same goes for ironing clothes, the iron just does it. When I think about where explicit temperatures are needed in the home, the oven and thermostat are the two things that come to mind. Water is pretty irrelevant for both of those. For cooking or frying someone may monitor meat or oil temps, but those aren’t water. A hot tub might have an actual temp on it, but those tend to be around 100F, not 100C, as they are meant for humans, not boiling. Water is an amazing liquid, but I still struggle to see how measuring all our temperatures based on it makes sense.
  - QuantumNomad_ 2mo ago
    > When I think about where explicit temperatures are needed in the home, the oven and thermostat are the two things that come to mind. But in that case in what way is for example baking a frozen pizza from the store at 400 to 425 degrees F more relatable/convenient/natural than 200 to 220 degrees C?

clickety_clack 2mo ago

I actually came around to Fahrenheit for the exact same reason. 0°F and 100°F are kind of the top and bottom of the temperature range I’m going to be experiencing and anything outside that is waaay too hot or cold. In Celsius a large portion of people have to flip to negative numbers regularly during the normal year, and everything between 45°C and 100°C is completely unused.

mmooss 2mo ago
> 0°F and 100°F are kind of the top and bottom of the temperature range I’m going to be experiencing and anything outside that is waaay too hot or cold. Food, saunas, the weather, a fever, and much more are often over 100F.
kelnos 2mo ago
I dunno, temperature doesn't really work like that. As a sibling mentioned, saunas: I can sit in a 190F dry sauna for about a half hour at a time and it feels hot but nice and soothing. But I can only handle a 120F steam room for maybe 10 minutes before I need to get out of there. (Speaking of the dry sauna, if someone pours a bit of water on the stones, it near-instantly feels significantly hotter, even though the temperature hasn't changed.) Put another way, I can sit in a 190F sauna for a half hour, but a half hour out in the sun in, say, Singapore, feels awful to me. 85F where I live now (unusual but happens), in a relatively dry climate, is bearable, while the same temperature where I grew up, in a much more humid place (where it was more common), feels gross and saps my energy. And I can be out snowboarding in 25F weather that's calm and sunny, and feel fine in a medium-weight clothing. But add clouds and wind, at the same temperature, and it's unbearable. And to me, based on the temperatures I usually see, 15F is waaay too cold, and 90F is waaay too hot. Sure, I guess I could round that down to 100F and up to 100F, but that just feels like being arbitrary for the sake of easy numbers.

Paracompact 2mo ago

OF will still kill you faster than 100F, and most folks aren't comfortable at 50F. It inspires the following idea: A nonlinear scale where ~72F is 0, and +X represents the same level of heat discomfort as -X represents cold discomfort.

8note 2mo ago
thats a very location dependent scale. youd still need to include where the discomfort is measured

kccqzy 2mo ago

That’s a biased view that leads to a scale only convenient for people living in particular latitudes. Now talk to someone living near the equator like Singapore, and 0F is unimaginably cold (even 40F is basically unheard of), and 100F is very hot but not extraordinarily so. Then you talk to someone living close to the arctic and the converse is true. All this talk about 0F to 100F being frequently encountered probably reveals your local climate conditions more than it helps define a useful global standard for all humans. We should accept that humans live in more diverse conditions than we intuit and such a scale probably won’t be useful for all.

cyral 2mo ago
Now I'm imagining some kind of timezone-like temperature unit that varies around the world, and a "100 things programmers should know about ___" post about all the intricacies and special cases.
- wiml 2mo ago
  Ooh, and it could shift seasonally so that summer temperatures and winter temperatures can both be in the convenient range. And every locality could shift a different amount and at different times of year according to their local climate. Next, we can look into reforming those pesky mass and volume units…
- kergonath 2mo ago
  I cannot wait for leap degrees.
strictnein 2mo ago
> That’s a biased view that leads to a scale only convenient for people living in particular latitudes I mean, the other option is cool vs dead > We should accept that humans live in more diverse conditions The second most diverse range of temps in the world is smack dab in the middle of the US: South Dakota up through northern Minnesota. Most years that area experiences -40F in the winter and 110F in the summer.
CrazyStat 2mo ago

Timpanzee 2mo ago

Except 0F being “really cold” and 100F being “really hot” is a personal bias of yours based on where you’ve lived. It’s not true for everyone or everywhere. And even if it were true, it still wouldn’t work. 100F in a dry environment is nice while, in a humid environment, 100F is awful. Same for 0F, a dry and static 0F is fine while a wet and windy 0F is killer.

strictnein 2mo ago
What's a "wet and windy" 0F? It's more or less a physical impossibility. 0F air can't hold much moisture. Also, it's not a killer.
- Timpanzee 2mo ago
  Experience 0F wind in central North America or Central Asia vs 0F wind on the coast and tell me it’s not different. Also, it’s killer, not a killer, as in it sucks a lot.
  - strictnein 2mo ago
    There's still almost no moisture in the air at 0F, no matter if you're on the coast are in the middle of the continent. The air just can't hold that much water at that temp. When it's warm: 50% humidity @ 40C: 25.43 g/kg (grams of water / kg of air) 90% humidity @ 40C: 45.78 g/kg When it's cold: 50% humidity @ -18C (~0F): 0.68 g/kg 90% humidity @ -18C (~0F): 1.23 g/kg There's just not enough there to cause any noticeable affect. But you don't have to take my word for it, the US National Weather Service agrees: https://www.weather.gov/safety/cold-wind-chill-chart https://www.weather.gov/safety/cold-wind-chill-chart "The results of the tests showed that relative humidity was an insignificant weather parameter, affecting the outcome to less than 1 degree"

arjie 2mo ago

Haha, judging by my personal standards, we need to set the zero to 15 C and the 100 to 40 C. My Degrees Arjie are going to be a revolution.