• @[email protected]
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    22 months ago

    Okay so fahrenheit has a well-defined high and low, but an arbitrary freezing point of one certain chemical. All other chemical freezing points are arbitrary.

    Celsius has an arbitrary high and low, but a well-defined freezing point of that same chemical. All other freezing points are arbitrary.

    If your motivation is to minimize the amount of arbitrary values you have to memorize, fahrenheit is the clear winner.

    • @[email protected]
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      62 months ago

      The 0 in Fahrenheit was based on nothing and the 100F was supposed to be human temperature but it is off by some degrees

      The water is not an arbitrary temperature, the weather is water dependant, at 0C the water will freeze and you get snow/ice instead of rain

      • @[email protected]
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        12 months ago

        0°F is when the ocean freezes

        100° F was human body temperature, later revised somewhat with better measurements and a decrease of parasites . The average person in those days in London had a slightly higher body temperature than today

        • @[email protected]
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          12 months ago

          0F is not ocean freezing, is the freezing temp of a brine mix that he chose arbitrarily (some think that he chose that temp because it was close to the coldest his town had ever been and he used it to calibrate the scales of his thermometers)

          FYI, the ocean freezes at around 28F

          • @[email protected]
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            12 months ago

            Oceans freezing also depends on currents, and mixing of the water from the surface. 28° will freeze water in a room.

            This is why often the ocean is not frozen at much lower temperatures.

            I’m not at all cognizant of how 0 was decided

    • AFK BRB Chocolate
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      42 months ago

      The zero C is freezing and 100 C is boiling, so not really arbitrary.

      But it’s pretty hard to define a scale that has intuitive, round numbers for everything we might care about.

      • @[email protected]
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        42 months ago

        You’re correct. In a lab setting, 0C and 100C are not arbitrary.

        In the weather forecast, they are.

        Which ties into your final point, it’s hard to define a scale that is best for everything, which is exactly what I’ve been saying this whole time. Fahrenheit is better for some things, Celsius for others.

        The only reason people in this thread are saying otherwise is because for some reason they’ve tied up some significant part of their self-worth into their belief that “lmao DAE fahrenheit bad amirite??1?”, and they mistakenly believe that those of us that understand nuance are trying to belittle or disparage them in some way. I assure you, we are not.