Both are equally arbitrary. You just have to know a handful of temperatures that you use in your day to day life either way.
Comment on temperature
uienia@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Americans always regurgite the “Fahrenheit is how people feel” nonsense, but it is just that: nonsense. Americans are familiar with fahrenheit so they think that it is more inituitive than other systems, but unsurprisingly people who are used to celsius have no problems using it to measure “how people feel” and will think it is a very inituitive system.
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Celsius being based on water makes it the most intuitive of the three imo.
marcos@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Hum… Around here water boils at ~96°C (some labs measure that). And it seems to not freeze at 0°C anywhere on Earth, as it’s never pure water, with never an homogeneous freezing point.
It is repeatable, it’s not very arbitrary, but “intuitive” doesn’t apply in any way.
mypasswordistaco@iusearchlinux.fyi 8 months ago
You must be at altitude. That definitely makes a difference for the boiling point, but of course water freezes at 0. Impurities that you’ll encounter in tap water, for example, will not have a large effect on freezing point.
Even if it was different by a few degrees, how does that make the scale any less intuitive?
ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Differences are neglegtable. 96°C is still going to kill you.
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Not really, it’s just the one you’re more familiar with.
ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That certainly does play a role, but it also just makes more sense.
Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
It is really easy to map onto human feel though. 0-100 pretty accurately maps onto our minimum and maximum realistically survivable temps, long-term, and the middle temperatures of those are the most comfortable. It’s far more round, when it comes to describing human preference and survivability, than Celsius is.
faintbeep@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I bet a lot more people know what 0°C feels like than 0°F. One is freezing point, one is a completely arbitrary temperature which only gets called “the lowest you’ll experience” as a post hoc rationalisation of Fahrenheit. Most people will never experience anything that cold.
I even bet more people know what 100°C feels like than 100°F. One is accidentally getting scalded by boiling water, the other is a completely arbitrary temperature which is quite hot but not even the hottest you’ll experience in America.
Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
boiling water isnt necessarily 100c. if youre boiling water, it can be any arbitrary temperature above 100.
thats like going to a geyser pit and saying thats 100c, when it isnt. when you cook and let water come to a boil, the chef doesnt care that its exactly 100c, only that its in the state above 100.
mypasswordistaco@iusearchlinux.fyi 8 months ago
If anything it’ll be below 100 due to altitude. Salt water for making pasta boils still at approx 100 deg. C. It takes quite a lot of salt (way more than you would ever want to consume) to meaningfully raise the boiling point.
__dev@lemmy.world 8 months ago
if youre boiling water, it can be any arbitrary temperature above 100.
That’s not how boiling works. The water heats up to its boiling point where it stops and boils. While boiling the temperature does not increase, it stays exactly at the boiling point. This is called “Latent Heat”, at its boiling point water will absorb heat without increasing in temperature until it has absorbed enough for its phase to change.
There is an exception to this called superheating
ferralcat@monyet.cc 8 months ago
What? People experience 100 f regularly. It’s literally their body temperature.
hex@programming.dev 8 months ago
I wanna say that with this logic 50 should be right around the most comfortable temp… But for most people it’s closer to 70.
I’ll try to explain how easily mappable Celsius is to people as well.
-40 to +40… -40 being extremely cold, and +40 being extremely hot. 21c is the equivalent of 70f.
It’s all the same stuff. Just matters what you’re used to.
Sludgeyy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
0-150 is the better range, and 75 is right in the middle. 100 is just a hot air temperature most people don’t want to be in but it’s not an extreme.
Saunas can get up to 200 degrees
Hot tubs are usually at 100
Freezers need to be at least 0
You say 15°C. 6° cooler than room temperature. But how much is 6°?
It’s 60°F.
50°F or 10°C is where you need clothes to survive
300, 325, 350 is where you bake cookies (149-176°C)
Fahrenheit has a bunch of 5 and 10s
Saying something like high 70s or low 70s for temp represents an easy way to tell temperature.
21° to 26° for celcius
I walk outside and say “It feels like high 70s today” someone using celcius would say, “Feels like 25°”. If it was a little warmer than “low 80s” compared to “Ehh about 26 or 27°C”
readthemessage@lemmy.eco.br 8 months ago
Why is it okay to say high 70s/low 80s and not high 20s? No one goes outside and says, “Ehh, it feels like 26.6 oC today.”, we just know it is a bit warmer than 25.
hex@programming.dev 8 months ago
Yeah, I get your point. I think I’m just trying to explain that it all just matters where you grew up and what you used. I go outside today and I do say it feels like a 12 degree day. It’s not that much different.
I must admit, the oven temps are nice, but they are a product of being written in Fahrenheit (if they were written in celcius, it would be round too, like 150c, 160c, 170c, 175c, etc)
But the more I look at it the more I see it’s all just numbers. We put importance to these numbers but they’re all pretty arbitrary, except celcius using 0 as the freezing point for water and 100 as the boiling point- these are two very important measures that are just weird for Fahrenheit.
Rinox@feddit.it 8 months ago
0-150 is the better range
Depends on where you live. Someone in Siberia would probably disagree, as the temperature there can reach -40
Allero@lemmy.today 8 months ago
No it doesn’t, unfortunately What makes 0F (-18C) special? How do you estimate survivability at such temperature? If I’d be out on the street naked, I would die there in a matter of minutes. At the same time, there is plenty of places where winter temperatures go -40F (-40C) and even below, yet people very much survive and live there.
Similar with 100F (38C). There are places with higher temps in the summer, up to 120F (49C) in some places, yet people survive. Still, if you’re not equipped with anything, 100F (38C) will burn you alive.
Sludgeyy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
0F is the temperature a freezer needs to be to keep food fresh.
50F is the point that you can’t survive without clothes, your body will not generate enough heat.
100F (38C) will not burn you alive. You can survive for a long time in a sauna at 200F.
100F is perfect hot tub temperature
Allero@lemmy.today 8 months ago
Freezer normally operates at -4F
You can’t survive without clothes at 55-60F, either.
100F will not burn you in an instant, but the comment went into long-term survival, and good luck surviving at that.
Ultraviolet@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Good luck surviving in 0°F long term.
ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Russians do it. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
ShakeThatYam@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I like that Fahrenheit has a narrower range for degrees. 1C is 1.8 degrees F. So, F allows you to have more precision without the use of decimals. Like, 71F feels noticeably different to me than 64F, but that is only a 3.8 degree difference in C.
Ilflish@lemm.ee 8 months ago
But that also doesn’t matter because the granularity is meaningless if you don’t make decisions for differences between 71F and 70F
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Not at those exact temperatures, but one degree matters in in grilling meat, making mash for beer, making candy, etc.
gofsckyourself@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Sure, but you should be using Celsius for those things. That’s the main argument here.
matti@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
Where in the chicken I jam the thermometer makes several degrees difference. If you truly require that level of granularity whilst grilling, I’d wager reading a decimal figure isn’t the end of the world. Us normies can continue to bring chicken to 74 and call it a day
matti@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
3 degrees celcius is easily noticeable too so that’s a bit of a moot point. If anything, 1 degree celcius is much harder to discern and therefore having an even more granular scale is unnecessary.
Lizardking27@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I mean, you’re 100% wrong. Fahrenheit isn’t “how people feel” arbitrarily, it’s almost literally a 0-100 scale of how hot it is outside. You need no prior knowledge to interpret a Fahrenheit measurement. Which really reflects poorly on everyone who says “Fahrenheit doesn’t make any sense” because if they were capable of any thought at all they would figure it out in 2 seconds, like everyone else. I’m a lab rat that uses Celsius all day every day, I’m just not a pretentious stuck up tool about alternate measurements just because I refuse to understand them.
inverted_deflector@startrek.website 8 months ago
Celsius is more intuitive for like science or lab work but for day to day use either one is really arbitrary based on what you’re used to.
Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Can confirm. Moved from the US to Canada and a year of using Celcius revealed to me just how fucking stupid and convoluted Fahrenheit is.
CluckN@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Fahrenheit has a fine granularity that is lost in cold climates. It’s why the Bahamas/Belize use it as well.
Johanno@feddit.de 8 months ago
Well you know that you can use the decimals?
How is - 40.000001°F more fine than - 40.00000000001°C?
23°C is a nice room temperature.
18°C is a bit chilly but still a comfortable temperature.
If you want to go for a finer destinction then we cann say 18.5°C is warmer but I personally can’t feel the difference.
CluckN@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Our bodies are 80% water why not use a system that reflects this?
Wolf_359@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I can feel the difference between 71 and 73 in my house.
At 73, my kids room is uncomfortably hot. At 71, it has a perfect chill for sleeping.
rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Slightly off topic, but 23°C is a nice room temperature? We have our thermostats at 20°C and I find it quite warm. In the sleeping room we have 18°C and so do I have in my office, which I find quite comfortable. I hate visiting my parents, they always have 22.5°C which I find uncomfortably warm.
Well it’s all subjective after all, I’ll be happy about chilly 23°C inside when summer comes.
toaster@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
I would argue it’s because of historical usage, familiarity, and resistance to change. Most countries and most people living in hot climates use Celsius.
imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Save yourself before it’s too late.
Do not say anything positive about Fahrenheit in this thread… the Temperature Scale Inquisition is watching closely for any dissent from the party line.
minibyte@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Fahrenheit is European.
ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world 8 months ago
*was
systemglitch@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I use it and I am not European.
ivanafterall@kbin.social 8 months ago
..._USA #1_!?