I love it when it’s -10% hot in winter nights or 110% hot around the equator. Makes perfect sense.
Comment on Burning Up
alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
But really it is much better for human temperatures.
It’s just intuitive, 0F is 100% cold, and 100F is 100% hot.
When the dry bulb gets above 100F, wind only cools you down by sweat evaporation, and when the wet bulb gets above 100F, even that can’t cool you down, and you will die if you don’t get to a cooler or drier environment.
pumpkinseedoil@mander.xyz 1 week ago
alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Yes, it does a better job of impressing that is all of the hot (or cold), and then 10% more than the difference between 38 and 43
huf@hexbear.net 1 week ago
i assure you, we who grew up with celsius absolutely know the dire difference between 38 and 43. 38 is death, 43 is the crimson realms where even souls wither.
all this “which one is better for x” is nonsense, you develop a feel for whichever you grew up with. it’s just that the math is less stupid with metric. that’s all.
flora_explora@beehaw.org 1 week ago
Any of the systems is better if you have an intuitive understanding of it. I don’t know what 107 F would feel like, just as you don’t know what 42°C feels like. But it’s not a thing where one is inherently better than the other…
Lizardking27@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yes, it does, actually. Thank you.
UlyssesT@hexbear.net 1 week ago
Being 41% of the way to boiling water sounds pretty hot to me, too.
lauha@lemmy.one 1 week ago
Lol, 0F is not 100% cold. That is barely cold unless you live in very warm place
alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Do you live in northern canada?
uienia@lemmy.world 1 week ago
People do live outside of North America. I know that must be news to you, but it is the truth.
lauha@lemmy.one 1 week ago
Europe
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
How is 0F 100% cold though, most places will never get that cold, so it surely makes more sense to have 0F at freezing point of water and 100F at 38C?
MadBob@feddit.nl 1 week ago
Not to mention negative numbers.
OpenStars@discuss.online 1 week ago
Freezing point of pure water - but saltwater/brine freezes as a different temperature.
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
pure water at mean atmosphere pressure at sea level if we’re getting technical, but frankly human body temperature varies from 35.5C (95.9F) to 37.5C (99.5F) anyway, and that’s before considering when people are ill, so if we go down that route it falls apart quickly enough that the definition of 100 given above is clearly just as arbitrary
OpenStars@discuss.online 1 week ago
I’m okay with “mean atmosphere pressure” bc that’s what is most likely to occur, whereas pure water seems far less likely to be found in a coastal village. The oddness of the measuring abilities of the devices made at the time is a more damning argument, but less for them back then and more for us now. Still, roughly negative ten to 40 for Celsius vs. roughly zero to one hundred for Fahrenheit, the latter does seem to use more “natural” numbers, even if nothing else about non-metric systems makes any sense.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
0F is 100% cold, and 100F is 100% hot.
So 50% is perfect temperature, no?
Nakoichi@hexbear.net 1 week ago
When I was out in SD recently the temperature was reaching 100F or above frequently and it sucked but it wasn’t that bad. Where I live in Cali and it gets that hot by the beach with humidity well into the 70% range sometimes I literally felt like I was about to die just sitting inside with a fan blowing right at me. Humidity is such a huge factor.
suzune@ani.social 1 week ago
Is 50°F 50% cold or 50% hot?
IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
“Intuitive” is a meaningless metric for a single scaled number. Whichever system you are used to will be the more “intuitive”.
Also, climate can play into which system feels more useful. Where I live, 100F occurs only rarely (and since air conditioning is almost ubiquitous, not something I’d bother looking out for), while 0C is an outdoor temperature that I do need to be aware of for half the year.
Donkter@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I disagree that either would be just as intuitive. Fahrenheit being 0=cold and 100=hot is intuitive because there are a lot of things we do in the world that exist on a scale of 0 - 100. Percentages, just off the bat. Also, fahrenheit has a higher degree of fidelity in the temperature range that we use.
Celsius’s general temperature scale is like -10 - 40 which is absolutely not intuitive because it doesn’t look like any other scale we use as humans. I agree that we get used to Celsius fast and it’s a fine it’s not like it’s super confusing (and Celsius is so much more useful scientifically).
Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 1 week ago
Which system did you grow up with? Because I grew up from the start with Celsius und it is 100% intuitive to me. Everytime you americans use your funny temperature numbers I have to stop and use a tool for transforming it or I simply ignore it and go “low means cold and high means hot, how high? Ain’t nobody got time for dat!”
So I disagree with your notion that Fahrenheit is intuitive.
Donkter@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Never said either one can’t be intuitive, just that the scale of farenheit has a precedence outside of it being an arbitrary temperature measurement by being a scale that goes from about 0 - 100.
If you had never used either scale and some one asked: “which is more intuitive, a temperature scale where -10 is really cold and 40 is really hot or one where 0 is really cold and 100 is really hot.” I know which one I would pick.
we_avoid_temptation@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
That’s not either scale being intuitive or unintuitive, that’s your familiarity with one over the other.
I got curious so I did some research on the definitions and why everything is this way. It looks like they originally picked the coldest thing they had (brine, possibly inspired by the coldest weather), the freezing point of water, human body temperature, and the boiling point of water. It was supposed to be brine at 0, water freezing at 30, the human body at 90, and water boiling at 240. Fahrenheit then recalibrated his scale slightly to make his math (and thermometer design and production) easier, and also because he noticed water actually boiled at 212 by his newly modified scale.
Looking at it like that work the context of what they had at the time and what they were trying to do, it makes a lot of sense.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit#History
Lizardking27@lemmy.world 1 week ago
What you grew up with =/= what is intuitive.
That is not what intuitive means. You’re talking about what’s “familiar”.
Familiarity is subjective. Intuitiveness is objective.
uienia@lemmy.world 1 week ago
“cold” and “hot” are completely non-descriptive and useless parameters for your supposed “intuitive” system.
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It has only been 100°F once in the last century. Nobody has any point of reference to make this intuitive. 30°C/85°F is defined as hot around here. 40°C/100°F is defined as national emergency.
TherapyGary@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
The heat index gets over 100°F in much of the southern US every summer
Lizardking27@lemmy.world 1 week ago
“It has only been 100F once in the last century”
Lmao what?? Go ahead and find me a source for that.
I guarantee you it reaches 100F regularly during summer in many temperate climates, that’s not even including warmer regions.
Do you think your little small town is the only place in the universe?