• @ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
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    96 months ago

    Fahrenheit is based on how the human body tells temperature and I’ll die on that hill.

    Celsius is for water and Kelvin is for molecules.

    Using Celsius or Kelvin for scientific measurement makes sense.

    Using fahrenheit for the average person just checking the atmospheric temperature makes sense.

    You can use different scales for different things ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

    • @Sanyanov@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      No it’s not.

      What makes 0°F (-17,7°C) special for a human body? Is it the limit after which we don’t feel any colder? No.

      And what makes 100°F (37,7°C) special? Maybe we can’t feel any hotter? No, we can. Is it the body temperature? No. What is it?

      Maybe 50°F (10°C) is perfect? Nah, cold!

      If we change 0°F to, say, 0°C and 100°F to 40°C, does it change the notion that 0°F is very cold for a human body and that 100°F is very hot? No, and as a bonus you get 50°F equaling that perfect 20°C.

      Fahrenheit scale is super arbitrary and it’s hilarious when it is posed as a “human-centric” scale. At the same time, the concept of Fahrenheit scale is unnecessarily complicated and the notion between Celsius is extremely clear - you can easily calibrate Celsius thermometer with nothing but kettle and freezer, right at home, right now.

      Also,

      • Sub-zero Celsius = very cold, snow doesn’t melt, ice doesn’t melt
      • 0 Celsius = cold, ice gets slippery
      • 10 Celsius = jacket weather
      • 20 Celsius = comfy
      • 30 Celsius = hot
      • 40 Celsius = scorching
      • Above 40 Celsius = deadly, leave the area ASAP (short exposures like sauna don’t count). Also, fans stop cooling you down and now heat you up instead.

      Simple enough.

      • @zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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        36 months ago

        Fahrenheit scale is super arbitrary and it’s hilarious when it is posed as a “human-centric” scale.

        The Fahrenheit scale is literally based on what was thought to be the limits of human comfort though. 0° F started as the lowest measured temperature in Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit’s hometown, and 100° F was his estimate of normal human body temperature.

        You think it’s arbitrary because you’re used to a different scale. To me, having a scale go from 0C to 40C seems arbitrary, especially because I live in an area where for 3 months out of the year, it’s constantly below 0C, and it’s critical to know the difference between -5C and -15C, rather than just lumping them both into the same “sub-zero” category. I’m the same vein, categorizing 10C as “jacket weather” is borderline useless. The “jacket” I’m going to wear at 10C is much heavier than the one I’m going to wear at 17C (if I wear one at all), for example.

        By the way, you can do the exact same breakdown of the Fahrenheit scale, except it’s more than twice as granular, and it goes from 0 to 100, like a bunch of other metric measurements… It boggles my mind when metric users use the 0 to 40 Celsius scale up as an argument against Fahrenheit.

        • @Sanyanov@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Fahrenheit’s hometown is certainly the metric everyone should use /s

          Celsius is not arbitrary, it is based on objective physical reality, and the only arbitrary thing about it is atmospheric pressure, which is more or less equal on the sea level. The rest is us finding convenient patterns, not the other way around. 0-40 is not a scale, it’s an arbitrary range and adaptation of Celsius to subjective feelings of hot and cold - one that you ironically need for Fahrenheit, too. Actual thermometers normally go -50°C to +50°C.

          On sub-zero, it is the same idea: -5°C is a weather for a light winter jacket, -15°C is a weather for a heavy winter jacket, -25°C is for heavy jacket and some pullover, etc etc.

          The 0-40 argument demonstrates that we don’t need some arbitrary scale based on Fahrenheit’s recording in his hometown in order to conveniently estimate temperature. The groups for each dozen of degrees are just for easy reference. 17 degrees is optional for your taste, to me it’s light jacket weather in overcast or t-shirt weather when sunny. There are no perfect temperatures for anything and anyone, and it just doesn’t make sense to get into more detail.

          As per granularity, people invented decimals, but normally it’s simply not necessary to tell the difference between 17°C and 18°C, let alone between 63°F and 64°F. There are so many factors influencing the temperature feeling, and one degree ain’t one.

    • @Floshie
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      36 months ago

      I’m the kind of person that hates it when the water’s too hot while taking a shower. Friends that I am living with take their shower way hotter to a point that I cannot resist the temperature

      How the fuck do you base your own temperature system on something so subjective ???