Ugh, I’m one of those people who will defend imperial as not being irrational, just built ad-hoc for purposes that aren’t in alignment with modern ones and … No, that’s not what Fahrenheit is.
Fahrenheit was trying to make a temperature scale that was easy to recreate to ease the calibration of thermometers. Zero is a temperature that can be created in your garage with some ice, salt and water. 100 was his best, ultimately inaccurate, attempt to measure human body temperature, since it’s another easy calibration point, and from there water was defined as 32 and 212 so that they were 180 degrees apart, which would fit will on a temperature dial.
Not irrational, not a comfort scale, and not in alignment with current needs.It’s pure coincidence that it kinda lines up with comfortable outdoor temperatures in the opinion of a good chunk of a population living in the northern part of the western hemisphere.
i’ve never understood how people imagine an easier scale to calibrate than celsius, what is easier than freezing and boiling water??
Human body temperature isn’t an easy calibration point, are you gonna shove it up your ass to calibrate it, or what?
Well, first off he wasn’t actually doing it after Celsius existed as a temperature scale. He made it a solid 18 years beforehand.
Second, there are some issues. Specifically, ice freezes at 0, but it doesn’t stop getting colder. So if you have a bit of ice, that doesn’t tell you the temperature, just that it’s below a threshold. Boiling is more convenient because liquid water can’t get above 100, but you do have to consider side pressure.
Fahrenheit used brine because as it freezes it forces salt out of the ice, making it more resistant to freezing. It self stabilizes its temperature, which is immensely handy.None of the people designing their scales envisioned that using the basic reference points for common calibration would be a thing. Just like how we don’t calibrate them with brine, ice, steam or butts today, instead relying on how we marked down how electrical resistance changes as a function of temperature and then calibrated reference numbers to get the scale right.
It’s important to remember that the people in the past were largely not stupid, they simply hadn’t found out something we take for granted or they had priorities that we don’t.
Yeah we know it’s a coincidence. That’s kinda a part of the joke. No need to flex your knowledge here Mr smarty pants
100% hot by what understanding? If I set my oven to 100F, the peak of heat by this memes reckoning, that roast chicken is going to kill my family.
If I run a warm bath at 50F, the medium-est of heats, My testicles are going to implode faster than a billionaire in a homemade submarine when they touch the water.
If we are talking human comfort, then 50F is also way too cold to be considered “50% hot”.
💯 hot! We bring out the weird chili sauce for you!
No, but seriously, babe, the whole Imperial system gets a bad rap…
I’ve been trying to work out how I knew those memes were related and fine. It’s fine.
I’m 98.6° Greg. Am I hot?
Oh baby, you certainly are
That depends, can I milk you?
Only from the toes
Scared to reach your full potential, eh?
I got a fever and there is only one cure
Technically, you’re a 9.8/10. But I can round it up to 10/10 ;)
Who are you to judge a person’s rounding error
Edit At least you were nice about it tho.
I use a binary thermometer. 1 is hot, 0 is cold.
The only temperature system that isn’t arbitrary would tell you how spreadable butter is. Zero degrees butter is utterly not spreadable while 100 degrees butter is the maximum spreadability it could achieve before melting.
what does it mean when it breaks 100% , like in phoenix? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Phoenix
110°F = 110% hot. It still holds up.
It’s like the difference between being in the blast radius of a fission bomb vs a hydrogen bomb. Does the size of the blast really matter glfrom ground zero?
When it’s 100 degrees outside, I avoid the outside as much as possible. If it’s 120 degrees outside, I avoid the outside as much as possible.
This is actually true
and then theres Kelvin, where 0 literally is 0% hot
and doesn’t exist, which is fun
i feel like this was either made by a fahrenheit user, or a nothern canadian. 0°C isn’t “fairly cold”, it’s freezing! 10°C is “fairly cold”.
I have to be that guy: it’s K, not °K.
Thank you for your service.
ok
You’re supposed to get rid of the circle, not make it bigger!
We need a new scale where 0 is 0K and 100 is the temperature of the big bang.
Another balmy day of approximately 0 degrees out.
May I suggest calling it the Morphius scale?
“The temperature will be 1 °M today”
“In the beginning it was 100 degrees Morphius”
Americans using the word propaganda for “something I don’t understand because my school system failed me so now I overcompensate by making up factoids that make me look even more uneducated by the rest of the world”
Repurposing words like that is underrated.
Americans using the word propaganda for “something I don’t understand because my school system failed me so now I overcompensate by making up factoids that make me look even more uneducated by the rest of the world”
Whoosh.
I’m geniunly curious why you are getting down voted. The “propaganda” word choice is clearly part of the joke.
I mean, I wish we used C instead of F, but this take is still a whoosh.
I’m curious, why? I think metric makes sense in most regards but I like the granularity of F. The difference between 70F and 75F is pretty noticeable, but in C, it’s like what? 1 degree?
Because my partner uses C. The constant jump scares from temps is annoying 😀
Separate from that, I use temps for what to wear, so exactness is less important to me. In truth AQI and humidity are much more important metrics to me.
Plus:
- Equipment temps are always in C
- Using C is a gateway to metric use
- Devices built for C are just… better. Example: Any washing machine for C has the temperatures listed on the settings vs the ever so useful “warm” or “colors”
- Kettle boils when it hits 3 digits. More fun.
So, lots of ancillary reasons I guess, vs any one direct reason.
0 hot? So what about when it’s -40?
-40% hot, that’s pretty damn cold!
0% hot = 100% cold
so
-40% hot = 140% cold ❄️
If it gets hot this year I’m going to go off to my partner about how its almost 0% cold.
Sounds like girl math. 😜
that’s when the two scales collide…
-40FC…
‘fucking cold’
Can confirm this is accurate.
funnily, the same as -40 C
Yes, intentional.
Humans shouldn’t exist in zones outside 0-100
I understand you’re being sassy but below zero you do start saying “no but seriously, how can it be this cold?” Zero is about the lower limit before temperature stops being distinguishable and just becomes cold
Lol no.
The feeling of cold weather is entirely subjective. A Brazilian from Bahia will wear a winter coat and feel cold at 20C, but somebody from northern Canada would be going out for a swim in their shorts.
Which is why any attempt at using “oh it means cold percentage” or “oh below zero it just feels the same” is extremely dumb and a easily refutable attempt at saving a bad scale.
Point was, doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from, once it gets to -40 it’s “fucking cold” to literally everyone
So what?
Yup. We were at an event and it was a hot weekend, mid 30’s C, sunny, so we were in shorts and staying in the shade. My sister, who had just come back from a tour in Afghanistan, was wearing a sweater and shivering.
I grew up in the Northeastern US. I lived in the Southeastern US for a few years. My first year there it was 65F in March and everyone was still in their winter coats with scarves and hats commenting that they couldn’t wait for spring and I was in a t shirt with sweat literally rolling down my arms and face and I remember saying “wait, this isn’t spring?”
Sweat rolling down your arms at 65 degrees?
X
There is a BIG difference between 0F, -20F and -40F. And as someone that has worked in areas that has often seen -60F, -20F feels like spring in comparison, the local Inuit wouldn’t even wear a jacket at 0F.
It is funny how 40 in the fall sees most folks bundling up with everything they have, and 40 the spring is shorts and sandals weather.
I don’t stop wearing shorts until it’s about 0F out or the wind is insane. Not to like shovel the driveway or anything being out for extended periods, but going out shopping or whatever is fine. Today was 0 with a -20 windchill and my Costco run was done in shorts, a sweatshirt, and a baseball cap.
Spoken like somebody who doesn’t experience freezing degrees very often.
I like how they claimed Fahrenheit made sense by relating it to a scale between 0 and 100 because a grade divided into 100 pieces (centigrade) is a system that is easy to handle. If only there was a unit of measurement that was already like that.
No they’re relating average earth temperature/weather to a centigrade scale, instead of relating liquid water to one.
Average is one number, not a range. Do you mean standard deviation?
It is not average Earth temperature though.
“Average earth temperature”? Lmao
I might catch flak for this, but I understand Fahrenheit made a ton of sense of an illiterate bygone era (well, I guess coming back maybe)
The vast majority of people were uneducated. Decimals were a non-starter, maybe negatives were also difficult?
0-100 was very easy. Under 0? Don’t go outside if possible. Over 100? Don’t go outside if possible. >50/halfway? Time for a coat. Having the same scale from -15 to 40 might have been confusing and not centered for them?
How is freezing cold, 32% hot? What am I missing here?
Because I can still walk to the mailbox in shorts at 32
You could still do that at -10% hot, so I don’t get your argument.
Yeah but I can’t be -10% naked, at 0°f I’m 0% naked, I have on all the layers that I could possibly layer. At 100°F I want to be 100% naked, minimal clothing socially required because it’s hot outside. My outfit might change from 90 to 100, but after 100 I’m capped out on what I can remove before I need to either move to a place that allows public nudity or just resolve myself to public indecency charges. At 32°F I can still run out to the mailbox in shorts and a hoodie, that’s not 0% naked that’s frankly still a long ways away from fully clothed.
Or pull the trash cans to the curb!
no i can’t. i’m not risking garbage water getting on my slippers and freezing into them
You guys are too ignorant to see how full of shit OP is.
50F is not 50% hot, it’s cold. If your house was 50F you’d be saying “something is wrong with my HVAC”. You’d never heat to only 50, and you’d never cool that far. It’s cellar temperature (colder than a wine cellar, warmer than a root cellar).
70F is 50% hot. It’s a temp you’d cool to in the summer, and a temp you’d heat to in the winter.
100F isn’t 100% hot either, most people enjoy a hottub to be a little hotter.
Tldr: OP is wrong
50°F is when I might start wearing pants instead if shorts. I will still be wearing a t-shirt, and won’t bring a jacket until at least 40°F.
70°F is the hottest it can be outside before I become uncomfortably warm.
When I get in a hot tub that is at 100°F, I will turn it down to at least 95°F and know that I won’t be able to stay much longer.
This is the other problem with Fahrenheit, there is no universal “100% hot”. While Celsius doesn’t have the granularity and is subject to “just ask water how it feels” criticism, at least “what temperature is water” is a consistent way to explain it as opposed to saying “at 100°, you’ll be hot”
When I’m running tho, 50 degrees is a medium amount of hot.
32 percent hot is water freezing tho? Idk… 1/3 hot seems like not the right amount for water freezing.
You clown, hot has been defined as 100°F since 1724. Therefore 50°F = 50% hot.
50 degrees feels pretty fucking warm when i get out of the below zero walk in
This one (bath thermometer) goes to 111°F
Celsius is the perfect system to describe how hot or cold it is, assuming you’re a water molecule.
Got 'em.
People are mostly water, no? Makes perfect sense then.
Ugly bags of mostly water, yes.
Found the microbrain.
Very judgemental of you to call me mostly water!
Most people die from heat way before water starts to boil though. And we also don’t freeze solid at 0°C, although it is pretty cold, I’d say that end fits slightly better.
Unlike water, humans tend to feel temperature differently.
So it is unreliable to use as a base for anything that requires precision and especially science.
And it would be pretty dumb to have a completely different system just for every day life.
