Let me explain. Anything below 0F is really cold for a human, and anything above 100F is really hot. The Fahrenheit scale was built around human biology.
0C isn’t even that cold, and 100C is literally instant death. Thus, Celsius is less applicable to the human experience and more applicable to the physical properties of water. The typical range of human scale temperatures is like -10 to 40 degrees on the Celsius scale? Makes no sense.
Kelvin is the most scientifically objective scale, but also the least intuitive for humans, because absolute zero is completely outside our frame of reference.
So it’s easily demonstrable that Fahrenheit is how people feel, Celsius is how water feels, and Kelvin is how molecules feel.
Be forewarned that I am willing to die on this hill, and any challenges to my position will result in increasingly large walls of text until you have conceded the point 😤
main arguments from below
Celsius is adequate because it’s based on water, and all life on earth is also based on water, so it’s not totally out of our wheelhouse. But for humans specifically I think Fahrenheit is the clear answer.
One point that many may overlook is that most of us here are relatively smart and educated. There are a good number of people on this planet who just aren’t very good with numbers. Obviously a genius could easily adapt their mind to Kelvin or whatever.
You have to use negative numbers more frequently with Celsius > Celsius has a less intuitive frame of reference
Each Celsius degree is nearly two Fahrenheit degrees > Celsius is less granular
The reason I argue the more granular Fahrenheit is more intuitive is because a one degree change should intuitively be quite minor. But since you only have like 40 or 50 degrees to describe the entire gamut of human experiences with Celsius, it blends together a bit too much. I know that people will say to use decimals, but its the same flaw as negative numbers. It’s simply unintuitive and cumbersome.
B) 66F is room temperature. Halfway between freezing (32F) and 100F.
the intuition is learned and not natural.
All scales have to be learned, obviously. It’s far easier to create intuitive anchorpoints in a 0-100 system than a -18 to 38 system. Thus, Fahrenheit is more intuitive for the average person.
I should note that if you are a scientist, the argument completely changes. If you are doing experiments and making calcualtions across a much wider range of temperatures, Celsius and Kelvin are much more intuitive. But we are talking about the average human experience, and for that situation, I maintain Fahrenheit supremacy
Final edit:
Well, I got what I asked for. I think I ended up making some pretty irrefutable points with these two last ones though. Once again, math saves the day. If somebody wants to continue the discussion make another thread and tag me because this is a bit much for science memes.
further arguments
It’s not about the specific numbers, but the range that they cover. It’s about the relation of the scale to our lived experience. Hypothetically, if you wanted to design a temperature scale around our species, you would assign the range of 0-100 to the range that would be the most frequently utilized, because those are the shortest numbers. It’s not an absolute range, but the middle of a bell curve which covers 95% of practical scenarios that people encounter. It doesn’t make any sense to start that range at some arbitrary value like 1000 or -18.
When the temperature starts to go above the human body temperature, most humans cannot survive in those environments. Thus, they would have little reason to describe such a temperature. Celsius wastes many double digit numbers between 40-100 that are rarely used. Instead, it forces you to use more negative numbers.
This winter, many days were in the 10s and 20s where I live. Using Celsius would have been marginally more inconvenient in those scenarios, which happen every winter. This is yet another benefit of Fahrenheit, it has a set of base 10 divisions that can be easily communicated, allowing for a convenient level of uncertainty when describing a temperature.
the end is nigh
Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
The Fahrenheit scale was built around human biology.
Nope, it was built around the highest and lowest extremes some dude could create in his room. Not based on human biology in the slightest. Don’t repeat this false information.
0C isn’t even that cold, and 100C is literally instant death.
Yeah, but counter argument, who gives a shit?
The “meme” doesn’t say anything remotely close to “from 0 to 100”. I don’t know why you are under the impression that these scales become inaccurate if you leave the 0-100 range.
I live in a region that frequents -40C to +40C over a year- that’s centered on zero, so it’s already better for “how humans feel” than being centered on 32 and pretending there is some cosmic/celestial/god ordained reason for it.
Kelvin is the most scientifically objective scale, but also the least intuitive for humans…
Still no one giving a shit- the “meme” doesn’t remotely even suggest anything related to this.
Be forewarned that I am willing to die on this hill
I don’t know why you sign this off with “I’m an obnoxious twat”, but I’m perfectly happy with using the block function if the threat is real.
A) Fahrenheit has an appropriate level of granularity for humans
B) Fahrenheit has an intuitive frame of reference for humans
Celsius and Kelvin do not.
I don’t want to fight about this I just think it’s actually true, and I also think Europeans get insanely defensive about stuff like this for no reason.
A) So is Celsius, you do everything in double digits until you turn on your oven.
B) If 50F was actually room temperature (the middle of too hot and too cold), I could agree. The fact that is is not means for me the intuition is learned and not natural. And that I have to learn a few anchorpoints to convert my own intuition when I ever visit the US.
Idk how your A relates to mine, if anything that’s more about the frame of reference, not the granularity. It’s good that you rarely have to use triple digits, but you do have to use negative numbers quite frequently.
You have to use negative numbers more frequently with Celsius > Celsius has a less intuitive frame of reference
Each Celsius degree is nearly two Fahrenheit degrees > Celsius is less granular
The reason I argue the more granular Fahrenheit is more intuitive is because a one degree change should intuitively be quite minor. But since you only have like 40 or 50 degrees to describe the entire gamut of human experiences with Celsius, it blends together a bit too much. I know that people will say to use decimals, but its the same flaw as negative numbers. It’s simply unintuitive and cumbersome.
B) 66F is room temperature. Halfway between freezing (32F) and 100F.
the intuition is learned and not natural.
All scales have to be learned, obviously. It’s far easier to create intuitive anchorpoints in a 0-100 system than a -18 to 38 system. Thus, Fahrenheit is more intuitive for the average person.
I should note that if you are a scientist, the argument completely changes. If you are doing experiments and making calcualtions across a much wider range of temperatures, Celsius and Kelvin are much more intuitive. But we are talking about the average human experience, and for that situation, I maintain Fahrenheit supremacy
Your point about intuition is moot, imo, because if you didn’t grow up with F it’s just as unintuitive as C is to you.
When you’re used to it the usage of decimals and negative numbers is neither complicated nor unintuitive because you’ve learned to know this intuitively for your whole life.
I could argue, that freezing temps outside being below 0 are unintuitive because it’s obvious to me that negative temps mean it’s literally freezing cold. That’s intuitive for me because I‘ be used that my entire life. Same as room temperature being 20°C. It just makes sense to me because I‘ve always know it that way.
Your “intuitive anchor points” 32 or 66 or whatever are completely nonsensical and unintuitive to someone whose brain is wired in Celsius. Because we don’t think in -18 to 38 but rather -20 to 40, if you want to think of it like that (or -40 to 20 I suppose, if you live somewhere where it’s colder). But in all honesty, in my day to day life, I don’t think about that, because I just know what a celsius value means intuitively.
Fahrenheit is more intuitive for the average American, not the average person.
I don’t think you’re taking into account that the average person is really bad at math. There’s a lot of people around the world that are illiterate.
Anything can be intuitive if you’re intelligent enough. But when something is described as intuitive, that implies that it can be easily understood. Put it this way, if F is 1/10 difficulty, C is 2/10 and Kelvin is 5/10.
Would you also argue that Kelvin is intuitive?
Just because Celsius works perfectly fine doesn’t mean that Fahrenheit doesn’t make more intuitive sense.
I’m sorry, but if you go out on a cold day and see a barrel of water with ice on the top, you immediately know it’s freezing cold and we’re in the negatives. Water freezing being 0 is a solid, objective anchor point.
“When it feels cold” will vary from someone that lives in a generally warm climate to someone that lives in a colder climate but water will freeze at 0. That means the warm and cold people can base their range around that and intuitively understand how far or above or below 0 the extreme hot or cold areas are. Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
That might be true but only if you live in a climate that actually has temperatures from about 0-100F. If you don’t (which most people don’t), it’s just as arbitrary. If you live somewhere it’s freezing regularly, it’s good to know if the roads will be icy (below 0°C) or not (above 0°C). If you live somewhere where it’s regularly above 100F and rarely below 50F, that scale doesn’t really work intuitively either, anymore.
And of course Kelvin isn’t intuitive but that’s because it isn’t centered around anything within the human experience. Frozen and boiling water are within the human experience however. And again, if you’d have only ever used K, it’d come just as easy to you as F does now.
A) Fahrenheit has an appropriate level of granularity for humans
B) Fahrenheit has an intuitive frame of reference for humans
true.
Celsius […] do not.
false.
Europeans get insanely defensive about stuff like this for no reason.
Be forewarned that I am willing to die on this hill, and any challenges to my position will result in increasingly large walls of text until you have conceded the point 😤
Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
copy pasting now are we?
here was my response to the same copied comment:
but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way.
As you might imagine I completely disagree.
For my purposes 20’s, 30’s, negative 10’s and so on is perfectly good, and I would describe my purposes as human.
Again, this is based on your, and my, learned reference points. Of course you feel the scale of the farenheit is better suited for describing your life, those are your learned reference points.
I have my own learned reference points based on the Celsius scale I grew up with and, suprise suprise, to me they’re superior.
You replied to me on multiple different threads, so I didn’t realize you were the same person. Generally if you’re serious about a debate, it’s best to keep things to one comment chain. Otherwise you’re just kinda yelling at somebody.
Unlike Americans, celsius and kelvin users are not afraid of decimals, which fullfills all your graularity needs if you have them. But mostly it isn’t even needed because you literally cannot feel the difference.
On 7 August 2010, Russian finalist and former third-place finisher Vladimir Ladyzhensky and Finnish five-time champion Timo Kaukonen passed out after six minutes of 110 °C (230 °F) heat, both suffering from serious burns and trauma. According to a spectator, Kaukonen was able to leave the sauna with assistance, but Ladyzhensky had to be dragged out, suffering from convulsions, burns, and blisters.[5] Ladyzhensky died despite resuscitation and Kaukonen was rushed to the hospital.[6] He was reported to suffer from extreme burn injuries, and his condition was described as critical, but stable.
I guess that would put a damper on future competitions. Seems like something from an old Simpsons episode.
The typical range of human scale temperatures is like -10 to 40 degrees on the Celsius scale? Makes no sense.
But it makes so much sense though. Because it’s anchored around the freezing and boiling points of water, which is a universal experience we can all relate to. 0°C outside? It’s freezing.
Fahrenheit as “the human scale” is what makes no fucking sense. You end up with the same exact problem where your specific range of “human scale temperatures” does not line up with 0-100°F at all. But it’s also not anchored to water’s behavior. So it just ends up being arbitrary.
But it makes so much sense though. Because it’s anchored around the freezing and boiling points of water, which is a universal experience we can all relate to. 0°C outside? It’s freezing.
It does make sense. But no, I cannot personally relate to being H2O and freezing into a block of ice or evaporating into the air.
As a human, I can relate to when I feel cold, and when I feel hot. And a scale where I feel hot at 30 degrees and cold at -10 is not even remotely intuitive.
You end up with the same exact problem where your specific range of “human scale temperatures” does not line up with 0-100°F at all.
Human scale temperatures do line up with 0-100 on the Fahrenheit scale. Certainly much better than 0-100 on the Celsius scale. How are you even disputing that???
Of course what you grew up with makes the most sense, but everyone down voting you for saying 0–100 makes more sense in a vacuum than -20–40 always makes me laugh in these kinds of threads.
It’s all learned behaviour. If you grew up with F that makes total sense and C sounds ridiculous. If you grew up with C that’s totally intuitive for anyone, just as much as F, so using a scale that has no point outside of the weather sounds dumb. Neither system is more intuitive by any means. Both systems ave benefits and downsides.
Whenever I talk to americans and they use F I need to convert it because I grew up with C and that just makes more sense to me, even if I know the “0-100 F is according to human experience” thing. Like sure, 80F is hot, but how hot is it? Oh 27C that’s hot but not extreme.
Arguing one or the other is superior is not only pointless but also just silly
And there we have it. You are not used to the system, so you can’t personally relate to it. Which is a perfectly acceptable opinion to hold. The problem is that you make a lot of claims about a system you are not as familiar with, most notably that it isn’t useful for what it is actually being used for by the majority of humans.
So when my neighbors mother from another climate came to visit during the summer, I was wearing shorts and t-shirts but she a winter jacket. According to whos experience did Fahrenheit match the human experience? It’s very variable and cannot be made to fit everyone. That water freezes at 0 is just as arbitrary but at least it’s an experience/observation anyone can share. If it’s 0°C outside puddles will freeze. Is it warmer or colder than when ice and snow melts is as good a reference as any, and to me having grown up with it, it feels superior because it’s what I’m used to.
I grew up with celcius and to me it feels more applicable to the human experience. It literally only depends on which one you’re more used to, idk why people feel the need to come up with these weird unnecessary “explanations”.
While commonly between 80 and 100, finnish sauna temperatures up to 110°c are not unheard of.
Very hot, but definitely not even close to instant death.
Really? My whole thesis paper about how humans immediately explode into a million pieces when they reach 100 degrees Celsius is completely ruined. How will I ever recover?
Anything below 10F is really cold for a human too, and so is anything below -10F what’s your point?
My point is self evident, you’re willfully ignoring it.
My point is self evident, you’re willfully ignoring it.
No it isn’t. No I am not. In fact that argument is quite a big sign there’s no actual evidence.
I am not trying to say Celsius is better than Farenheit. I however don’t agree with your argument that F is somehow more suited to humans.
It is simply a question of which one you are used to, and have built up an internal system of references to. Just as you feel your references are self evident, I feel the same about Celsius.
I have admittedly expounded at length in this thread already. If my point isn’t obvious, I’m not sure how.
Maybe I explained it slightly better here.
spoiler
It’s not about the specific numbers, but the range that they cover. It’s about the relation of the scale to our lived experience. Hypothetically, if you wanted to design a temperature scale around our species, you would assign the range of 0-100 to the range that would be the most frequently utilized, because those are the shortest numbers. It’s not an absolute range, but the middle of a bell curve which covers 95% of practical scenarios that people encounter. It doesn’t make any sense to start that range at some arbitrary value like 1000 or -18.
When the temperature starts to go above the human body temperature, most humans cannot survive in those environments. Thus, they would have little reason to describe such a temperature. Celsius wastes many double digit numbers between 40-100 that are rarely used. Instead, it forces you to use more negative numbers.
This winter, many days were in the 10s and 20s where I live. Using Celsius would have been marginally more inconvenient in those scenarios, which happen every winter. This is yet another benefit of Fahrenheit, it has a set of base 10 divisions that can be easily communicated, allowing for a convenient level of uncertainty when describing a temperature.
Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
I have admittedly expounded at length in this thread already. If my point isn’t obvious, I’m not sure how.
It’s because you are trying to prove your subjective experience is better than some other subjective experiences.
It’s just simply not how it works, it might be best to you, but refusing to accept that others subjective experiences differing from yours are valid is frankly narrow minded.
You are making subjective arguments and acting like they are objective cold hard facts.
Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Except you don’t, because all instrumentation uses celsius, as that is the sensible system. Also to human perception a difference of 1 degree C is already negligible, thinking adding an extra digit has any benefits is lunacy.
Simple experiment. Hold a pan at 50ºC for a minute, then hold a different pan for a minute at 51ºC. Once you’re done, tell me which burn hurt more, okay? :)
Hey buddy this is a bit much for a discussion about temperature scales, no? I’m quite shocked by this response tbh, if I knew people were this sensitive about Celsius I would have been more diplomatic in my original comment.
You’ll never know what it’s like to enjoy a sunny summer day, not a cloud in the sky, with a high of 82. Unlucky.
You’ll never know what it’s like to enjoy a sunny summer day, not a cloud in the sky, with a high of 82. Unlucky.
God damn man this is embarrassing, and I say that as a Fahrenheit using American.
You realize the only reason that 82 sounds like that is because you grew up with it, right? That to someone using Celsius, 28 degrees sounds exactly the same in their head? We’re not the only ones who get to experience the feeling “of 82”, others do too, they just call it something different. This isn’t complicated stuff.
I swear the only explanation is narcissism. Just an complete inability to empathize and understand other people’s worldviews.
Anything below 0F is really cold for a human, and anything above 100F is really hot.
Therefore the perfect temperature would be 50°F, which is 10°C, in my opinion a little too cold to be perfect, I’d prefer something in the 15-20°C range.
My argument is actually pretty simple, but people could always challenge these assertions, in which case it would get more complicated.
A) Fahrenheit has an appropriate level of granularity for humans
B) Fahrenheit has an intuitive frame of reference for humans
Celsius and Kelvin do not. Celsius is adequate because it’s based on water, and all life on earth is also based on water, so it’s not totally out of our wheelhouse. But for humans specifically I think Fahrenheit is the clear answer.
One point that many may overlook is that most of us here are relatively smart and educated. There are a good number of people on this planet who just aren’t very good with numbers. Obviously a genius could easily adapt their mind to Kelvin or whatever.
But Fahrenheit is the temperature scale of the proletariat, the working man, the average Joe. And I’m here for it.
A) Fahrenheit has an appropriate level of granularity for humans
You know that Celsius uses decimals for everything, so really not much difference. Furthermore the granularity of Fahrenheit doesn‘t have any advantages. You won‘t be able to feel wether its 70°F or 71°F outside, nor if you’ve got a fever of 101°F or 102°F. You need to look at a thermometer. And please don‘t reply saying that decimals are complicated. The majority of the planet, except certain Countries seem to manage just fine. Would be quite laughable if one certain country thinks it‘s too complicated.
B) Fahrenheit has an intuitive frame of reference for humans
Not really sure what you are referencing. I think it just stems from you growing up with Fahrenheit, so not feeling comfortable with anything else.
But Fahrenheit is the temperature scale of the proletariat, the working man, the average Joe. And I’m here for it.
I mean the “proletariat” of the majority of the world uses Celsius.
Not really sure what you are referencing. I think it just stems from you growing up with Fahrenheit, so not feeling comfortable with anything else.
Read some of my other comments. 0-100 is more intuitive than -18-38, no? None of you have even been willing to admit that simple fact yet.
Furthermore the granularity of Fahrenheit doesn‘t have any advantages. You won‘t be able to feel wether its 70°F or 71°F outside, nor if you’ve got a fever of 101°F or 102°F. You need to look at a thermometer. And please don‘t reply saying that decimals are complicated. The majority of the planet, except certain Countries seem to manage just fine. Would be quite laughable if one certain country thinks it‘s too complicated.
If you are refering to negative degrees, quite useful for telling how the weather is going to be. And to prevent the „negative numbers are hard“-Argument. It seems to work for the majority of people.
For the human bodytemperature argument often throw around: they are inconsiquential numbers in both systems.
Well because it stands on a false promise. Neither 0°F = the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride nor 100°F has any „real“ meaning.
It’s not about the specific numbers, but the range that they cover. It’s about the relation of the scale to our lived experience. Hypothetically, if you wanted to design a temperature scale around our species, you would assign the range of 0-100 to the range that would be the most frequently utilized, because those are the shortest numbers. It’s not an absolute range, but the middle of a bell curve which covers 95% of practical scenarios that people encounter. It doesn’t make any sense to start that range at some arbitrary value like 1000 or -18.
When the temperature starts to go above the human body temperature, most humans cannot survive in those environments. Thus, they would have little reason to describe such a temperature. Celsius wastes many double digit numbers between 40-100 that are rarely used. Instead, it forces you to use more negative numbers.
This winter, many days were in the 10s and 20s where I live. Using Celsius would have been marginally more inconvenient in those scenarios, which happen every winter. This is yet another benefit of Fahrenheit, it has a set of base 10 divisions that can be easily communicated, allowing for a convenient level of uncertainty when describing a temperature.
'murican being 'murican. That’s why nobody likes you people.
Kelvin is the most scientifically objective scale, but also the least intuitive for humans, because absolute zero is completely outside our frame of reference.
I like watching people dying in this hill, more power to you. I don’t necessarily agree, but telling people it’s negative anything just to say it’s pretty cold is indeed less intuitive to me (and kids don’t even know negatives until a bit older).
Only thing is, 100 doesn’t need to be anyone’s scale, with C I think of it more like a scale from 10 to 40, especially since I live in California, and F is more a scale from 50 to 110. It’d probably help if F really was based on human temps, with 100 being the average temp whenever you measure, instead of 96 to 98.
(An aside, neither are ratio scales. 0 in both cases are arbitrary and a temp of 100 isn’t twice as hot as 50. Only Kelvin is like that, which makes it my favorite even if it’s never intuitive, haha)
When I was a kid, I learned about negative numbers pretty early on. It was a perfectly normal part of life, since the temp was in the negative a lot of the year. Made sense to me. Temp is below zero? Water is solid. . Temp above zero? Water is liquid.
Fahrenheit doesn’t make much sense to me, inherently, because I don’t have an integral frame of reference, built over decades of familiarity. Celcius on the other hand, it just makes sense!
Sure, negatives aren’t hard, nor are decimals. But I should remind you we’re talking about a population that wouldn’t buy a third-pounder hamburger because they thought a quarter-pounder was more. Fractions are covered pretty early on, too!
Joking aside, if F actually was based on something specific and measurable, it’d also make sense. Then it’s just a matter of what you got used to. Granted, human temps vary, so you can’t just make 100 the human temp and 0 the temp a human dies, so that’s an impossibity. (Water can vary too under circumstances if I remember right, but not quite as much or as unpredictable as some human based metric).
Yeah, I know. It still moves the zero point and forces it out of ratio, but I prefer it. I know both F and C since I have to use both regularly. F is set to C, too, I think. F = 1.8c + 36, I think?
I didn’t find any others in a quick glance at the wiki, but it would be easy to imagine a scale like 0 at absolute zero, and 100 at the freezing point of water or something.
Never heard of Rankine, but it sounds like a Kelvin with a similar conversation to F (9/5, or 1.8, only inverse). Description suggestions as much, too. If I told students about it when talking about ratio scales, though, pretty sure it’d be a tad too much. Most haven’t even heard of Kelvin!
An aside, neither are ratio scales. 0 in both cases are arbitrary and a temp of 100 isn’t twice as hot as 50. Only Kelvin is like that, which makes it my favorite even if it’s never intuitive, haha
Huh, TIL. That’s actually pretty cool. Kelvin moving up the rankings 😅
Haha, I teach statistics and it’s usually a tough one walk on. You need a natural zero for ratios, even if the concept is a little weird (like 0 height). 2m is twice 1m, etc. My go to with interval (the non ratio continuous metric) tends to be likart scales. Or yelp stars, or any other arbitrary zero. I do mention temps, though
Makes sense. I always knew Kelvin started at absolute zero, but I don’t think I had ever heard of a ratio scale. I’m sure it has some kind of statistical implications about how you can analyze the data right?
Yeah, something like that. Scales of measurement is mostly a formality in undergrad but it does determine eventually what you can and can’t do with that scale.
That is a large amount of text to say “I am used to fahrenheit therefore it makes sense to me, and now I will proceed to claim it is the only system that shows how humans feel”.
I just got absolutely obliterated. Believe it or not, I got up to +10 on that initial comment at one point. I think if I had formally presented my argument initially, it may have gone better.
I just didn’t realize that mentioning Celsius was going to set off this kind of reaction. It’s so weird the things that different cultures hold sacred.
If your version of “fun” is repeatedly showing everyone the stupid thing you posted last time you were stoned out of your mind and telling them it’s a great mnemonic or mantra, then I’mma have to ask for us to not be friends.
“Fahrenheit is how people feel” only makes sense if said people have never used another scale. You know how 100F “feels” because that’s what you use. If you used Celsius you’d know how that scale feels instead, and be used to using the more useful scale generally.
See also: people who think they don’t have an accent.
I have zero reference for how hot my body is because I don’t feel my ambient temperature.
What I do know is that I feel cold if it’s anything below 30, and I know other people feel hot if it’s above 20. So what people consider hot/cold must clearly be based on something more than the average body temperature
If half a degree Celsius makes the difference between being comfortable or uncomfortable for you, then you have bigger problems than being able to use whole numbers.
The irony of someone not wanting to use decimal points for their temperature setting isn’t lost on me, when that same person has to resort to fractions to measure anything thinner than a door.
Put a temperature logger next to your thermostat and you’ll see it fluctuates 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit between the on off cycles. But your thermostat will make a great job fooling you.
You’re missing the point. The scale is what matters, not your personal experience or unit preference. From 0-100 F is right about what a human could be expected to tolerate without much help. In C, that’s -18-38. That’s a much more limited range in terms of human tolerance, but it works great for water, which would be 0-100 C. The scale doesn’t translate as well to K, but it does end at 0, so there’s that.
Try telling a northern siberian, who commonly see winter temperatures between -50 and -100 fahrenheit, that 0f is right about the limit for a human to tolerate…
You think those people go out without thick, warm clothes? I get you’re really committed to arguing for C against people not even arguing against it, but come on now. You know what I’m saying. It’s not a particularly difficult concept to grasp.
You wouldn’t tolerate 0 farenheit in the nude either.
You wouldn’t tolerate 10 farenheit for extended periods either.
I know what you are saying and I disagree.
I am not trying to say celsius is better than farenheit, I’m saying farenheit is not in any way intrinsically more human than celsius.
0 farenheit was chosen because that’s the temperature of salty ice, The lowest temperature they could easily achieve at the time, it has nothing to do with what humans can and can’t endure.
Exactly. And you’re not even pointing out that the human frame of reference starts at -18 Celsius! So a significant portion of the time, you’re going to have to use negative numbers to describe the temperature.
Edit
To clarify, I am not arguing that Fahrenheit is a better scale in general. I’m simply saying that it’s human-centric. Celsius is perfectly usable for human purposes, and also much more useful than Fahrenheit for scientific purposes. I’m just explaining how the meme makes sense to me
the human frame of reference starts at -18 Celsius!
That makes no sense to me at all. what frame of reference?
what happens at -18? Ive been out in temperatures both above and below that, yes its cold as fuck, but nothing special happens? If we move a bit further north here they’d call me a wuss, and tell me real cold starts at -30.
you’re going to have to use negative numbers to describe the temperature.
I find that really useful actually! Our world is made of water. In winter time here, temperatures above 0 means the snow will be soggy and wet, negative temperatures means it won’t.
if the temperature was above 0 but has now dipped into the negatives, beware of ice when walking or driving.
You can use all the arguments you want, the truth is either system is perfectly useful for human day-to-day use if you are used to it.
The best system, for you, will always be the one you grew up with
Don’t play dumb. We’re talking about the range of temperatures an average person experiences in their day-to-day lives.
In winter time here, temperatures above 0 means the snow will be soggy and wet, negative temperatures means it won’t.
This might blow your mind but you can do the same thing with Fahrenheit. Just look for the number 32 instead of 0.
You can use all the arguments you want, the truth is either system is perfectly useful for human day-to-day use if you are used to it.
The best system, for you, will always be the one you grew up with
I never said otherwise and I totally agree.
However they are different systems and they do have pros and cons. Fahrenheit is more suitable for daily life while Celsius is more suitable for science.
Sorry im clearly not your average person experiencing >38° on a regular basis. There are plenty of humans that exist in climates that fall entirely outside of what you Americans consider “normal”. Which is why “-18 - 38 is the ‘normal’ range for an average person” is such an American thing to say. You took your own climate and projected it across the world.
Personally I like to go with the system that makes the most sense for 70% of earth’s surface and 64% of a human body.
Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
To be clear, I’m not saying people are wrong to use C. People can use any unit they want for all I care. I’m just clarifying the point of the main post.
It only works if you grew up in a country that uses Fahrenheit. I didn’t, so to me Celsius is how I feel. I’ve no idea whether 20 f is jeans and a t-shirt weather, or if I should be getting my coat. 20 c however I know that as long as it’s not windy I’ll be good with jeans and a t-shirt, but that it’s still a little too cool to get out my shorts.
It didn’t say which people. Also, I’m from South East Asia and have used Fahrenheit my entire life as a means to measure body temperature using mercury thermometers during fever time. It’s so much easier to say whether a fever is above 100 or not and then how much above 100.
So people do feel in Fahrenheit. A fuck ton of them do.
Yes, I know the meme is about the weather but… take a chill pill and look at your prejudices.
It also closely matches the weather experience in many places. Where I live 0 F is about the coldest it ever gets and 100 F is about the hottest it ever gets. I know there are places that get a little hotter or colder, but we have humidity here which prevents it from getting hotter, and this region just doesn’t get colder. It’s a 0-100 scale of human experience.
Nah, it doesn’t make any sense, and isn’t deep or insightful at all.
Let me explain. Anything below 0F is really cold for a human, and anything above 100F is really hot. The Fahrenheit scale was built around human biology.
0C isn’t even that cold, and 100C is literally instant death. Thus, Celsius is less applicable to the human experience and more applicable to the physical properties of water. The typical range of human scale temperatures is like -10 to 40 degrees on the Celsius scale? Makes no sense.
Kelvin is the most scientifically objective scale, but also the least intuitive for humans, because absolute zero is completely outside our frame of reference.
So it’s easily demonstrable that Fahrenheit is how people feel, Celsius is how water feels, and Kelvin is how molecules feel.
Be forewarned that I am willing to die on this hill, and any challenges to my position will result in increasingly large walls of text until you have conceded the point 😤
main arguments from below
Celsius is adequate because it’s based on water, and all life on earth is also based on water, so it’s not totally out of our wheelhouse. But for humans specifically I think Fahrenheit is the clear answer.
One point that many may overlook is that most of us here are relatively smart and educated. There are a good number of people on this planet who just aren’t very good with numbers. Obviously a genius could easily adapt their mind to Kelvin or whatever.
You have to use negative numbers more frequently with Celsius > Celsius has a less intuitive frame of reference
Each Celsius degree is nearly two Fahrenheit degrees > Celsius is less granular
The reason I argue the more granular Fahrenheit is more intuitive is because a one degree change should intuitively be quite minor. But since you only have like 40 or 50 degrees to describe the entire gamut of human experiences with Celsius, it blends together a bit too much. I know that people will say to use decimals, but its the same flaw as negative numbers. It’s simply unintuitive and cumbersome.
B) 66F is room temperature. Halfway between freezing (32F) and 100F.
All scales have to be learned, obviously. It’s far easier to create intuitive anchorpoints in a 0-100 system than a -18 to 38 system. Thus, Fahrenheit is more intuitive for the average person.
I should note that if you are a scientist, the argument completely changes. If you are doing experiments and making calcualtions across a much wider range of temperatures, Celsius and Kelvin are much more intuitive. But we are talking about the average human experience, and for that situation, I maintain Fahrenheit supremacy
Final edit: Well, I got what I asked for. I think I ended up making some pretty irrefutable points with these two last ones though. Once again, math saves the day. If somebody wants to continue the discussion make another thread and tag me because this is a bit much for science memes.
further arguments
It’s not about the specific numbers, but the range that they cover. It’s about the relation of the scale to our lived experience. Hypothetically, if you wanted to design a temperature scale around our species, you would assign the range of 0-100 to the range that would be the most frequently utilized, because those are the shortest numbers. It’s not an absolute range, but the middle of a bell curve which covers 95% of practical scenarios that people encounter. It doesn’t make any sense to start that range at some arbitrary value like 1000 or -18.
When the temperature starts to go above the human body temperature, most humans cannot survive in those environments. Thus, they would have little reason to describe such a temperature. Celsius wastes many double digit numbers between 40-100 that are rarely used. Instead, it forces you to use more negative numbers.
This winter, many days were in the 10s and 20s where I live. Using Celsius would have been marginally more inconvenient in those scenarios, which happen every winter. This is yet another benefit of Fahrenheit, it has a set of base 10 divisions that can be easily communicated, allowing for a convenient level of uncertainty when describing a temperature.
the end is nigh
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
Nope, it was built around the highest and lowest extremes some dude could create in his room. Not based on human biology in the slightest. Don’t repeat this false information.
Yeah, but counter argument, who gives a shit? The “meme” doesn’t say anything remotely close to “from 0 to 100”. I don’t know why you are under the impression that these scales become inaccurate if you leave the 0-100 range. I live in a region that frequents -40C to +40C over a year- that’s centered on zero, so it’s already better for “how humans feel” than being centered on 32 and pretending there is some cosmic/celestial/god ordained reason for it.
Still no one giving a shit- the “meme” doesn’t remotely even suggest anything related to this.
I don’t know why you sign this off with “I’m an obnoxious twat”, but I’m perfectly happy with using the block function if the threat is real.
A) Fahrenheit has an appropriate level of granularity for humans
B) Fahrenheit has an intuitive frame of reference for humans
Celsius and Kelvin do not.
I don’t want to fight about this I just think it’s actually true, and I also think Europeans get insanely defensive about stuff like this for no reason.
A) So is Celsius, you do everything in double digits until you turn on your oven.
B) If 50F was actually room temperature (the middle of too hot and too cold), I could agree. The fact that is is not means for me the intuition is learned and not natural. And that I have to learn a few anchorpoints to convert my own intuition when I ever visit the US.
Idk how your A relates to mine, if anything that’s more about the frame of reference, not the granularity. It’s good that you rarely have to use triple digits, but you do have to use negative numbers quite frequently.
You have to use negative numbers more frequently with Celsius > Celsius has a less intuitive frame of reference
Each Celsius degree is nearly two Fahrenheit degrees > Celsius is less granular
The reason I argue the more granular Fahrenheit is more intuitive is because a one degree change should intuitively be quite minor. But since you only have like 40 or 50 degrees to describe the entire gamut of human experiences with Celsius, it blends together a bit too much. I know that people will say to use decimals, but its the same flaw as negative numbers. It’s simply unintuitive and cumbersome.
B) 66F is room temperature. Halfway between freezing (32F) and 100F.
All scales have to be learned, obviously. It’s far easier to create intuitive anchorpoints in a 0-100 system than a -18 to 38 system. Thus, Fahrenheit is more intuitive for the average person.
I should note that if you are a scientist, the argument completely changes. If you are doing experiments and making calcualtions across a much wider range of temperatures, Celsius and Kelvin are much more intuitive. But we are talking about the average human experience, and for that situation, I maintain Fahrenheit supremacy
Your point about intuition is moot, imo, because if you didn’t grow up with F it’s just as unintuitive as C is to you.
When you’re used to it the usage of decimals and negative numbers is neither complicated nor unintuitive because you’ve learned to know this intuitively for your whole life.
I could argue, that freezing temps outside being below 0 are unintuitive because it’s obvious to me that negative temps mean it’s literally freezing cold. That’s intuitive for me because I‘ be used that my entire life. Same as room temperature being 20°C. It just makes sense to me because I‘ve always know it that way.
Your “intuitive anchor points” 32 or 66 or whatever are completely nonsensical and unintuitive to someone whose brain is wired in Celsius. Because we don’t think in -18 to 38 but rather -20 to 40, if you want to think of it like that (or -40 to 20 I suppose, if you live somewhere where it’s colder). But in all honesty, in my day to day life, I don’t think about that, because I just know what a celsius value means intuitively.
Fahrenheit is more intuitive for the average American, not the average person.
I don’t think you’re taking into account that the average person is really bad at math. There’s a lot of people around the world that are illiterate.
Anything can be intuitive if you’re intelligent enough. But when something is described as intuitive, that implies that it can be easily understood. Put it this way, if F is 1/10 difficulty, C is 2/10 and Kelvin is 5/10.
Would you also argue that Kelvin is intuitive?
Just because Celsius works perfectly fine doesn’t mean that Fahrenheit doesn’t make more intuitive sense.
I’m sorry, but if you go out on a cold day and see a barrel of water with ice on the top, you immediately know it’s freezing cold and we’re in the negatives. Water freezing being 0 is a solid, objective anchor point.
“When it feels cold” will vary from someone that lives in a generally warm climate to someone that lives in a colder climate but water will freeze at 0. That means the warm and cold people can base their range around that and intuitively understand how far or above or below 0 the extreme hot or cold areas are. Generally -40 to 40 are the extremes of livable areas.
That might be true but only if you live in a climate that actually has temperatures from about 0-100F. If you don’t (which most people don’t), it’s just as arbitrary. If you live somewhere it’s freezing regularly, it’s good to know if the roads will be icy (below 0°C) or not (above 0°C). If you live somewhere where it’s regularly above 100F and rarely below 50F, that scale doesn’t really work intuitively either, anymore.
And of course Kelvin isn’t intuitive but that’s because it isn’t centered around anything within the human experience. Frozen and boiling water are within the human experience however. And again, if you’d have only ever used K, it’d come just as easy to you as F does now.
true.
false.
…
Thoughts?
spoiler
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
copy pasting now are we? here was my response to the same copied comment:
As you might imagine I completely disagree.
For my purposes 20’s, 30’s, negative 10’s and so on is perfectly good, and I would describe my purposes as human.
Again, this is based on your, and my, learned reference points. Of course you feel the scale of the farenheit is better suited for describing your life, those are your learned reference points.
I have my own learned reference points based on the Celsius scale I grew up with and, suprise suprise, to me they’re superior.
You replied to me on multiple different threads, so I didn’t realize you were the same person. Generally if you’re serious about a debate, it’s best to keep things to one comment chain. Otherwise you’re just kinda yelling at somebody.
well, it explains why your argument wasn’t very tied into the argument you replied to.
You’ve provided zero proof of either statement.
Unlike Americans, celsius and kelvin users are not afraid of decimals, which fullfills all your graularity needs if you have them. But mostly it isn’t even needed because you literally cannot feel the difference.
Laughs in Finnish (while sipping beer in a 100C Sauna)
He will surely die on his hill… ALONE !
Yes, a totally safe thing to do 🙄
Well, that’s just dumb. That’s a steam boiler, not a sauna.
I guess that would put a damper on future competitions. Seems like something from an old Simpsons episode.
Unsafe, yes, instant death? no.
But it makes so much sense though. Because it’s anchored around the freezing and boiling points of water, which is a universal experience we can all relate to. 0°C outside? It’s freezing.
Fahrenheit as “the human scale” is what makes no fucking sense. You end up with the same exact problem where your specific range of “human scale temperatures” does not line up with 0-100°F at all. But it’s also not anchored to water’s behavior. So it just ends up being arbitrary.
It does make sense. But no, I cannot personally relate to being H2O and freezing into a block of ice or evaporating into the air.
As a human, I can relate to when I feel cold, and when I feel hot. And a scale where I feel hot at 30 degrees and cold at -10 is not even remotely intuitive.
Human scale temperatures do line up with 0-100 on the Fahrenheit scale. Certainly much better than 0-100 on the Celsius scale. How are you even disputing that???
Of course what you grew up with makes the most sense, but everyone down voting you for saying 0–100 makes more sense in a vacuum than -20–40 always makes me laugh in these kinds of threads.
The timing of this comment is really killing me. Americans were just going to bed when I posted it 😂
It’s all learned behaviour. If you grew up with F that makes total sense and C sounds ridiculous. If you grew up with C that’s totally intuitive for anyone, just as much as F, so using a scale that has no point outside of the weather sounds dumb. Neither system is more intuitive by any means. Both systems ave benefits and downsides.
Whenever I talk to americans and they use F I need to convert it because I grew up with C and that just makes more sense to me, even if I know the “0-100 F is according to human experience” thing. Like sure, 80F is hot, but how hot is it? Oh 27C that’s hot but not extreme.
Arguing one or the other is superior is not only pointless but also just silly
wait 80f is 27c? That’s not hot at all
Weird because you’re made of mostly water. Like 70 something percent.
And there we have it. You are not used to the system, so you can’t personally relate to it. Which is a perfectly acceptable opinion to hold. The problem is that you make a lot of claims about a system you are not as familiar with, most notably that it isn’t useful for what it is actually being used for by the majority of humans.
So when my neighbors mother from another climate came to visit during the summer, I was wearing shorts and t-shirts but she a winter jacket. According to whos experience did Fahrenheit match the human experience? It’s very variable and cannot be made to fit everyone. That water freezes at 0 is just as arbitrary but at least it’s an experience/observation anyone can share. If it’s 0°C outside puddles will freeze. Is it warmer or colder than when ice and snow melts is as good a reference as any, and to me having grown up with it, it feels superior because it’s what I’m used to.
I grew up with celcius and to me it feels more applicable to the human experience. It literally only depends on which one you’re more used to, idk why people feel the need to come up with these weird unnecessary “explanations”.
Anything below 10F is really cold for a human too, and so is anything below -10F what’s your point?
While commonly between 80 and 100, finnish sauna temperatures up to 110°c are not unheard of.
Very hot, but definitely not even close to instant death.
Really? My whole thesis paper about how humans immediately explode into a million pieces when they reach 100 degrees Celsius is completely ruined. How will I ever recover?
My point is self evident, you’re willfully ignoring it.
No it isn’t. No I am not. In fact that argument is quite a big sign there’s no actual evidence.
I am not trying to say Celsius is better than Farenheit. I however don’t agree with your argument that F is somehow more suited to humans.
It is simply a question of which one you are used to, and have built up an internal system of references to. Just as you feel your references are self evident, I feel the same about Celsius.
I have admittedly expounded at length in this thread already. If my point isn’t obvious, I’m not sure how.
Maybe I explained it slightly better here.
spoiler
It’s not about the specific numbers, but the range that they cover. It’s about the relation of the scale to our lived experience. Hypothetically, if you wanted to design a temperature scale around our species, you would assign the range of 0-100 to the range that would be the most frequently utilized, because those are the shortest numbers. It’s not an absolute range, but the middle of a bell curve which covers 95% of practical scenarios that people encounter. It doesn’t make any sense to start that range at some arbitrary value like 1000 or -18.
When the temperature starts to go above the human body temperature, most humans cannot survive in those environments. Thus, they would have little reason to describe such a temperature. Celsius wastes many double digit numbers between 40-100 that are rarely used. Instead, it forces you to use more negative numbers.
This winter, many days were in the 10s and 20s where I live. Using Celsius would have been marginally more inconvenient in those scenarios, which happen every winter. This is yet another benefit of Fahrenheit, it has a set of base 10 divisions that can be easily communicated, allowing for a convenient level of uncertainty when describing a temperature.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
Are you high or some shit?
Yes, but that’s beside the point
It’s because you are trying to prove your subjective experience is better than some other subjective experiences.
It’s just simply not how it works, it might be best to you, but refusing to accept that others subjective experiences differing from yours are valid is frankly narrow minded.
You are making subjective arguments and acting like they are objective cold hard facts.
Whenever I think that I have seen it all in one of these °F vs °C threads, someone comes along and proves me wrong.
No, the F scale was not built around human biology, that is pure conjecture from people who can’t let go of their antiquated system of measures.
But you go die on that hill, I won’t stop you.
Thoughts?
spoiler
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
Except you don’t, because all instrumentation uses celsius, as that is the sensible system. Also to human perception a difference of 1 degree C is already negligible, thinking adding an extra digit has any benefits is lunacy.
Any response to the rest of my points?
Source?
Simple experiment. Hold a pan at 50ºC for a minute, then hold a different pan for a minute at 51ºC. Once you’re done, tell me which burn hurt more, okay? :)
Hey buddy this is a bit much for a discussion about temperature scales, no? I’m quite shocked by this response tbh, if I knew people were this sensitive about Celsius I would have been more diplomatic in my original comment.
You’ll never know what it’s like to enjoy a sunny summer day, not a cloud in the sky, with a high of 82. Unlucky.
You have issues. Get help.
God damn man this is embarrassing, and I say that as a Fahrenheit using American.
You realize the only reason that 82 sounds like that is because you grew up with it, right? That to someone using Celsius, 28 degrees sounds exactly the same in their head? We’re not the only ones who get to experience the feeling “of 82”, others do too, they just call it something different. This isn’t complicated stuff.
I swear the only explanation is narcissism. Just an complete inability to empathize and understand other people’s worldviews.
Therefore the perfect temperature would be 50°F, which is 10°C, in my opinion a little too cold to be perfect, I’d prefer something in the 15-20°C range.
I would not mind if you were to expand
My argument is actually pretty simple, but people could always challenge these assertions, in which case it would get more complicated.
A) Fahrenheit has an appropriate level of granularity for humans
B) Fahrenheit has an intuitive frame of reference for humans
Celsius and Kelvin do not. Celsius is adequate because it’s based on water, and all life on earth is also based on water, so it’s not totally out of our wheelhouse. But for humans specifically I think Fahrenheit is the clear answer.
One point that many may overlook is that most of us here are relatively smart and educated. There are a good number of people on this planet who just aren’t very good with numbers. Obviously a genius could easily adapt their mind to Kelvin or whatever.
But Fahrenheit is the temperature scale of the proletariat, the working man, the average Joe. And I’m here for it.
Multiple problems with you assertions.
You know that Celsius uses decimals for everything, so really not much difference. Furthermore the granularity of Fahrenheit doesn‘t have any advantages. You won‘t be able to feel wether its 70°F or 71°F outside, nor if you’ve got a fever of 101°F or 102°F. You need to look at a thermometer. And please don‘t reply saying that decimals are complicated. The majority of the planet, except certain Countries seem to manage just fine. Would be quite laughable if one certain country thinks it‘s too complicated.
Not really sure what you are referencing. I think it just stems from you growing up with Fahrenheit, so not feeling comfortable with anything else.
I mean the “proletariat” of the majority of the world uses Celsius.
Read some of my other comments. 0-100 is more intuitive than -18-38, no? None of you have even been willing to admit that simple fact yet.
Agree to disagree.
Well because it stands on a false promise. Neither 0°F = the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride nor 100°F has any „real“ meaning. The other limit established was his best estimate of the average human body temperature, originally set at 90 °F, then 96 °F . How is that intuitive.
If you are refering to negative degrees, quite useful for telling how the weather is going to be. And to prevent the „negative numbers are hard“-Argument. It seems to work for the majority of people.
For the human bodytemperature argument often throw around: they are inconsiquential numbers in both systems.
It’s not about the specific numbers, but the range that they cover. It’s about the relation of the scale to our lived experience. Hypothetically, if you wanted to design a temperature scale around our species, you would assign the range of 0-100 to the range that would be the most frequently utilized, because those are the shortest numbers. It’s not an absolute range, but the middle of a bell curve which covers 95% of practical scenarios that people encounter. It doesn’t make any sense to start that range at some arbitrary value like 1000 or -18.
When the temperature starts to go above the human body temperature, most humans cannot survive in those environments. Thus, they would have little reason to describe such a temperature. Celsius wastes many double digit numbers between 40-100 that are rarely used. Instead, it forces you to use more negative numbers.
This winter, many days were in the 10s and 20s where I live. Using Celsius would have been marginally more inconvenient in those scenarios, which happen every winter. This is yet another benefit of Fahrenheit, it has a set of base 10 divisions that can be easily communicated, allowing for a convenient level of uncertainty when describing a temperature.
So what you’re telling me is that you, specifically you, are too dumb to understand negative numbers…
'murican being 'murican. That’s why nobody likes you people.
Celsius is literally Kelvin + 273.
-10C or 10C: Pretty comfortable
-20C or 20C: Starting to feel bit cold or hot
-30C or 30C: Uncomfortably cold or hot
-40C or 40C: Almost painfully cold or hot
How exactly is -40F to 104F better than that for human purposes?
Where are you from that 10C is pretty comfortable and 20C is getting hot? Greetings from the middle east :)
I like watching people dying in this hill, more power to you. I don’t necessarily agree, but telling people it’s negative anything just to say it’s pretty cold is indeed less intuitive to me (and kids don’t even know negatives until a bit older).
Only thing is, 100 doesn’t need to be anyone’s scale, with C I think of it more like a scale from 10 to 40, especially since I live in California, and F is more a scale from 50 to 110. It’d probably help if F really was based on human temps, with 100 being the average temp whenever you measure, instead of 96 to 98.
(An aside, neither are ratio scales. 0 in both cases are arbitrary and a temp of 100 isn’t twice as hot as 50. Only Kelvin is like that, which makes it my favorite even if it’s never intuitive, haha)
When I was a kid, I learned about negative numbers pretty early on. It was a perfectly normal part of life, since the temp was in the negative a lot of the year. Made sense to me. Temp is below zero? Water is solid. . Temp above zero? Water is liquid. Fahrenheit doesn’t make much sense to me, inherently, because I don’t have an integral frame of reference, built over decades of familiarity. Celcius on the other hand, it just makes sense!
Sure, negatives aren’t hard, nor are decimals. But I should remind you we’re talking about a population that wouldn’t buy a third-pounder hamburger because they thought a quarter-pounder was more. Fractions are covered pretty early on, too!
Joking aside, if F actually was based on something specific and measurable, it’d also make sense. Then it’s just a matter of what you got used to. Granted, human temps vary, so you can’t just make 100 the human temp and 0 the temp a human dies, so that’s an impossibity. (Water can vary too under circumstances if I remember right, but not quite as much or as unpredictable as some human based metric).
Did it never occur to you that Celsius is basically Kelvin with the zero point moved to human reference?
Human reference because >50% of our body is water. We are essentially water bags.
Yeah, I know. It still moves the zero point and forces it out of ratio, but I prefer it. I know both F and C since I have to use both regularly. F is set to C, too, I think. F = 1.8c + 36, I think?
No, it just moves the zero point, no ratio change: 0°C = 273,15 K / just a simple addition/subtraction.
Colloquially you can also ignore the 0,15 and make it even simpler.
Oh yeah, you’re right, it’s just Kelvin on a F scale. I shouldn’t look at formulas at 2am when I should be sleeping, lol
False. Rankine is too.
I didn’t find any others in a quick glance at the wiki, but it would be easy to imagine a scale like 0 at absolute zero, and 100 at the freezing point of water or something.
Never heard of Rankine, but it sounds like a Kelvin with a similar conversation to F (9/5, or 1.8, only inverse). Description suggestions as much, too. If I told students about it when talking about ratio scales, though, pretty sure it’d be a tad too much. Most haven’t even heard of Kelvin!
Huh, TIL. That’s actually pretty cool. Kelvin moving up the rankings 😅
Haha, I teach statistics and it’s usually a tough one walk on. You need a natural zero for ratios, even if the concept is a little weird (like 0 height). 2m is twice 1m, etc. My go to with interval (the non ratio continuous metric) tends to be likart scales. Or yelp stars, or any other arbitrary zero. I do mention temps, though
Makes sense. I always knew Kelvin started at absolute zero, but I don’t think I had ever heard of a ratio scale. I’m sure it has some kind of statistical implications about how you can analyze the data right?
Yeah, something like that. Scales of measurement is mostly a formality in undergrad but it does determine eventually what you can and can’t do with that scale.
That is a large amount of text to say “I am used to fahrenheit therefore it makes sense to me, and now I will proceed to claim it is the only system that shows how humans feel”.
Looks like you made the mistake of posting this when the European downvote gang was awake.
I just got absolutely obliterated. Believe it or not, I got up to +10 on that initial comment at one point. I think if I had formally presented my argument initially, it may have gone better.
I just didn’t realize that mentioning Celsius was going to set off this kind of reaction. It’s so weird the things that different cultures hold sacred.
Lol I’ve got burned by it before too
Try having fun every once in a while
If your version of “fun” is repeatedly showing everyone the stupid thing you posted last time you were stoned out of your mind and telling them it’s a great mnemonic or mantra, then I’mma have to ask for us to not be friends.
Well, aren’t you a fun one?
What’s the flaw??
“Fahrenheit is how people feel” only makes sense if said people have never used another scale. You know how 100F “feels” because that’s what you use. If you used Celsius you’d know how that scale feels instead, and be used to using the more useful scale generally.
See also: people who think they don’t have an accent.
100 f is pretty close to average body temperature.
So above 100 means your surroundings are hotter than your body is unless you have a fever.
I think that’s an okay land mark.
I have zero reference for how hot my body is because I don’t feel my ambient temperature.
What I do know is that I feel cold if it’s anything below 30, and I know other people feel hot if it’s above 20. So what people consider hot/cold must clearly be based on something more than the average body temperature
I’m not saying it’s perfect.
But 100 being body temp is a land mark, so it’s not 100% arbitrary.
And 0f is close to salted ice. good system, very human.
Today I learnt. So that makes a bit more sense. 100 standard body temperature, 0 your blood starts to freeze.
If your body drops to room temperature, you’re already likely dead. If it freezes afterwards is only useful information if you’re preserving meat.
You know what? I just enjoy being able to set a thermostat to a comfortable level by just using whole numbers instead of resorting do decimal places.
If half a degree Celsius makes the difference between being comfortable or uncomfortable for you, then you have bigger problems than being able to use whole numbers.
Spoken like a pleb that has no control over their life. No thermostat control.
The irony of someone not wanting to use decimal points for their temperature setting isn’t lost on me, when that same person has to resort to fractions to measure anything thinner than a door.
Europeans don’t have thermostats because they don’t have AC. You’re speaking elvish to them.
Edit: Relax Europeans, it’s a snarky comment
If you don’t know what you’re talking about, then yes, you might as well speak Elvish.
Thanks mom
Put a temperature logger next to your thermostat and you’ll see it fluctuates 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit between the on off cycles. But your thermostat will make a great job fooling you.
Lmao I love Yanks, something cute about them
Notice how the tweet doesn’t say “all people”. Context is everywhere and everything.
Farenheit is how americans feel. Celsius is how normal people measure temperature. Better?
Notice how the tweet doesn’t say “American people”. Accuracy is everything.
I fall to context again. The person writing is white and clueless enough not to be specific. Clearly. American.
Anyways. We are splitting hair over a silly tweet here.
Apparently the brown Americans use Celsius.
Celcius is how I “feel”, because that’s the scale I’ve learned and can relate to.
Farenheit is what you “feel” for the same reason.
It’s not because one is intrinsically better linked to our bodies.
You’re missing the point. The scale is what matters, not your personal experience or unit preference. From 0-100 F is right about what a human could be expected to tolerate without much help. In C, that’s -18-38. That’s a much more limited range in terms of human tolerance, but it works great for water, which would be 0-100 C. The scale doesn’t translate as well to K, but it does end at 0, so there’s that.
Yet people live in negative farenheit conditions.
Try telling a northern siberian, who commonly see winter temperatures between -50 and -100 fahrenheit, that 0f is right about the limit for a human to tolerate…
Exactly: or take folks who live in the tropics (about 40% of the human population) where it feels cold below 60F.
You think those people go out without thick, warm clothes? I get you’re really committed to arguing for C against people not even arguing against it, but come on now. You know what I’m saying. It’s not a particularly difficult concept to grasp.
You wouldn’t tolerate 0 farenheit in the nude either.
You wouldn’t tolerate 10 farenheit for extended periods either.
I know what you are saying and I disagree. I am not trying to say celsius is better than farenheit, I’m saying farenheit is not in any way intrinsically more human than celsius.
0 farenheit was chosen because that’s the temperature of salty ice, The lowest temperature they could easily achieve at the time, it has nothing to do with what humans can and can’t endure.
Whatever mate. I’m not here to argue you out of whatever tunnel your stuck in. Good luck with that.
Exactly. And you’re not even pointing out that the human frame of reference starts at -18 Celsius! So a significant portion of the time, you’re going to have to use negative numbers to describe the temperature.
Edit
To clarify, I am not arguing that Fahrenheit is a better scale in general. I’m simply saying that it’s human-centric. Celsius is perfectly usable for human purposes, and also much more useful than Fahrenheit for scientific purposes. I’m just explaining how the meme makes sense to me
That makes no sense to me at all. what frame of reference? what happens at -18? Ive been out in temperatures both above and below that, yes its cold as fuck, but nothing special happens? If we move a bit further north here they’d call me a wuss, and tell me real cold starts at -30.
I find that really useful actually! Our world is made of water. In winter time here, temperatures above 0 means the snow will be soggy and wet, negative temperatures means it won’t.
if the temperature was above 0 but has now dipped into the negatives, beware of ice when walking or driving.
You can use all the arguments you want, the truth is either system is perfectly useful for human day-to-day use if you are used to it.
The best system, for you, will always be the one you grew up with
Don’t play dumb. We’re talking about the range of temperatures an average person experiences in their day-to-day lives.
This might blow your mind but you can do the same thing with Fahrenheit. Just look for the number 32 instead of 0.
I never said otherwise and I totally agree.
However they are different systems and they do have pros and cons. Fahrenheit is more suitable for daily life while Celsius is more suitable for science.
Sorry im clearly not your average person experiencing >38° on a regular basis. There are plenty of humans that exist in climates that fall entirely outside of what you Americans consider “normal”. Which is why “-18 - 38 is the ‘normal’ range for an average person” is such an American thing to say. You took your own climate and projected it across the world.
Personally I like to go with the system that makes the most sense for 70% of earth’s surface and 64% of a human body.
What? -18C to 38C is a massive range. Only a very small percentage of people would experience temperatures outside that range for most the year.
Now you are almost arguing against yourself, I can use the same argument about body temperature, just look for 37 instead of 100
And this is a pro for me where I live.
These don’t square.
Celsius and farenheit is just as suitable for daily life. You learn your important reference points and go from there.
Sure, water is a really good system and it works well.
And for F that range is -40 to 104. See how you get 64 extra degrees of precision and nearly all of them are double digit numbers? No downside.
Furthermore F can use its base 10 system to describe useful ranges of temperature such as the 20s, 60s, etc. So you have 144 degrees instead of just 80, and you also have the option to utilize a more broad 16 degree scale that’s also built in.
You might say that Celsius technically also has an 8 degree scale(10s, 30s), but I would argue that the range of 10 degrees Celsius is too broad to be useful in the same way. In order to scale such that 0C is water freezing and 100C boiling, it was necessary for the units to become larger and thus the 10C shorthand is much less descriptive than the 10F shorthand, at least for most human purposes.
To be clear, I’m not saying people are wrong to use C. People can use any unit they want for all I care. I’m just clarifying the point of the main post.
Totally, same. This thread was started by OPs reply
That was what triggered my response, otherwise I probably woulda just upvoted and kept scrolling.
The fuck does this mean
“Kilometres is how cars drive. Feet is how people run”
This has the same level of nuance and thought behind it. It’s just stupid.
It only works if you grew up in a country that uses Fahrenheit. I didn’t, so to me Celsius is how I feel. I’ve no idea whether 20 f is jeans and a t-shirt weather, or if I should be getting my coat. 20 c however I know that as long as it’s not windy I’ll be good with jeans and a t-shirt, but that it’s still a little too cool to get out my shorts.
You mean other than the fact only a tiny proportion of people in the world use Fahrenheit?
It didn’t say which people. Also, I’m from South East Asia and have used Fahrenheit my entire life as a means to measure body temperature using mercury thermometers during fever time. It’s so much easier to say whether a fever is above 100 or not and then how much above 100.
So people do feel in Fahrenheit. A fuck ton of them do.
Yes, I know the meme is about the weather but… take a chill pill and look at your prejudices.
My guy, you asked what the flaw was…
It also closely matches the weather experience in many places. Where I live 0 F is about the coldest it ever gets and 100 F is about the hottest it ever gets. I know there are places that get a little hotter or colder, but we have humidity here which prevents it from getting hotter, and this region just doesn’t get colder. It’s a 0-100 scale of human experience.
5-ish percent isn’t exactly tiny
It’s tiny enough to be an issue for the meme…
you know your feelings are in Fahrenheit, you’re not some metric machine
/s?
America maybe?