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Phoenix breaks heat record as city hits 110F for the 54th consecutive day
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Metric: 1 calorie heats 1 gram of water 1 C°, 1 gram is equal to 1cm³. Water boils at 100 C° and freezes at zero.
Imperial: 1 calorie heats 1 something by ?? F equal to ???, and 0F and 100F are completely irrelevant to everyday life and tasks.
I get your point, but disagree with your thesis. Fahrenheit makes a lot of sense for human comfort ranges. 0 and 100 are some of the most extreme natural temperatures most people in F-using countries ever see. 0 means cold as fuck and 100 means hot as fuck. And there’s a single-digit useful precision to it as well. 72 and 73 are close, but noticeably different. Celsius requires decimals for that kind of difference. And 0 means “it’s kinda cold outside, I guess” and 100 means “you were dead a long time ago”, so it’s not nearly as useful in every day life with natural living temperatures.
So you're saying it's relevant for basically nothing but the weather. It's not a very good argument.
To be fair, that's all it's used for. No one uses Fahrenheit for science in the US.
Is also incredibly subjective. What's comfortable for one person might not be for another. I'm pretty sure an Inuit and a Ghanan have pretty different ideas of what's cold or hot. Same for Floridan and Minnesotan speaking of the US
0 and 100 are not comfortable for anyone.
I get your point "but because I was brought up with this system I'm going to make an argument as why it makes sense to me"
25 Celsius is a nice summer day
0 Celsius you better take a jacket and it's probably going to snow
43 Celsius damn hot
60-80 Celsius a very nice sauna
It's not that hard burgerman
Hey, we didn't come up with the shit in the first place. The Imperial System is a British invention.
If it requires this much explanation, it's not very sensible.
In Celsius 0 is freezing and 100 is boiling. It's so simple. "Comfortable" is anywhere from like 15-30 (my Canadian standards, very subjective I know) and we don't need decimals.
Here you go. Pretty simply, really.
"Fairly cold"? I've been in 0c a few times in my life and every time it was freezing!
Isn't 100f the temperature your blood is meant to be?
It's honestly really intuitive for weather if you grew up with it. We still use metric for science because it makes the most sense there, like you say.
But it's not that simple. 100 boiling is only true at sea level. At 530 (~1750 feet) it's 98c. At 1500m (~5000ft) it's down to 95c. At 3000m (10k feet) it's just under 90c. Ocean water freezes at -2c. Fully saturated salt water freezes at -21c.
Fahrenheit doesn't have this issue?
That's an approximation. Celsius is no longer defined in terms of water boiling and freezing, and they are no longer exactly 0 and 100.
The modern definition of Celsius is based on absolute zero and the triple point of water. And those are also the basis for the modern definition of Fahrenheit.
Any usefulness of Fahrenheit is purely accidental, how is water freezing at 32F useful? I'll grant that the finer resolution can be seen as a positive, I don't see how Fahrenheit is better for human comfort, my personal optimal comfort zone is 22-24C°, and I have no need for decimals for that. 73F is pretty close to 23C, I don't see much difference regarding comfort in either.
The huge problem with Fahrenheit, is that it is impractical in many situations, it has basically no merit to justify its existence, and only a minority of countries continue to use it.
Of course Americans can do whatever they want, but they are looking stupider for each year they keep using "Freedom Units".
Of course Americans switch to metric for mostly anything scientific, for example NASA use Metric.
The SI unit of temperature is kelvin, not Celsius.
If people don't want to use kelvin, does that mean they are stupid?
The usefulness of gravity is also purely accidental
False equivalence. gravity is not man made.
0 means any water outside will most likely start freezing, 100 means any water outside will be boiling. Makes sense to me. What temp do things start freezing in F? 30? 40? Doesn't make sense at all. What temp does water boil? 160? I dunno, none of it is rational in any way.
0/32/64/96 are somewhat reasonable breakpoints in F, and make dividing the space between them in half repeatedly on a thermometer simple. Fahrenheit was literally made up by Big Thermometer for this exact reason.
"Somewhat reasonable"
Lol, big thermometer.
they are all arbitrary numbers. Originally C actually had water freeze at 0 and boil at -100
Salt water freezes at 0F. Normal water at 32 F. Normal water boils at 212 F. Human body at 100 F (which is wrong, but also has been changing.) Below 10 F snot in nose freezes. 20 F is time to switch to long pants.
Water freezes at an obvious 32°F at sea level and of course boils at 212°F. What's so confusing about that? /s
Water boils at 99.9839 Celsius, not 100. What so confusing about that?
but how often does knowing how to convert water weight to volume come up? Same with the energy to heat water.
Weight to volume is extremely common when I cook, because often things are measured in volume, but I prefer to use the weight.
½ a liter water or milk or almost any fluid without extra dish-washing? Easy you just put it on the weight, select tara, and pour 500 grams. Voila you just saved both kitchen space and extra work. because 1g = 1ml with water and most fluids.
It's equally easy if the number given isn't in liter, ml or milliliter of course converts directly to grams, and dl or deciliter = 100 g. 1 liter of course being 1000 ml and in water 1000 g or 1 kg. It's consistent all the way through.
I guess if you are used to Freedom units, this may sound like science fiction, but this has been reality in many countries for a long time already.
One pint of water or milk without extra dish-washing? Easy you just put it on the scale and pour one pound.
OK Imperial is not something I'm used to use, but according to Wikipedia, a pint is 569.6 ml and a pound is 0.4535 kg.
So you'd be off by 116,1 g or a whopping 25%!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units
That would ruin many great recipes.
The American pint is 473 mL.
The Imperial pint used to be that much too, hence the old saying "A pint is a pound the world around". Then the Imperial pint was increased by 25%, but Americans kept the old amount.
The water/weight comes up all the time. Filling a 10L bucket, I know that is going to weigh 10kg. I know I can lift it and my kid can't.
The energy one, I'm not even sure is right. We don't use calories, we use kilojoules. A joule is used to lift 1kg 1m. It's not something I ever use. I use kilojoules for tracking food I ate today, that's about it.
Lifting 1 kg by 1 m would take 9.8 joules.
I'm a fan of the metric system, but understand that Fahrenheit is pretty convenient for regular human temperatures. For one, the vast majority of climate temperatures that we experience in the US on a regular basis land between 0°F & 100°F except for deserts & recent climate change impacts. For another, Farenheit is a bit more precise as whole numbers since differences between degrees are smaller, so I can be more precise with my a/c thermostat.
Still, I would prefer that we change to metric across the board in the US because it is more congruent across dimensions and decimals are easier to manipulate than fractions for me. For the latter, if I had a recipe that required I calculate 1/3 cup plus 1/2 cup, I have to switch to 2/6 & 3/6, which equals 5/6, then I'm stuck estimating that anyway since most measuring cups aren't labeled to the 6th precision. It gets even more confusing when we have to consider teaspoons, tablespoons, & pints. Using liters would be so much more convenient for me. Another area where I get confused is when measurements for food are presented as ounces versus fluid ounces. I understand the difference, but it's still something I have to think extra about.
My one request in switching over to metric would be that weather and thermostat temperatures are presented at least to the .5°C precision level so that 75°F would be 24.0°C and 74°F would be 23.5°C. Yes, I'm this picky about my thermostat settings and can notice a difference between 75°F/24.0°C and 74°F/23.5°C.
Request granted! My European thermostat that is about 30 years old now, has a display accuracy of 0.5 degrees, so I'd expect more modern systems to be at least as accurate. I'm not going to speak of the actual accuracy, but the display at least is 0.5 🙂