• lime!@feddit.nu
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    2 months ago

    the numbers may be, but if you asked me to tell you what they feel like i would have to convert them to celsius first. where i live temperatures are generally between -30 and +30, and i could tell you in an instant what I would wear for a given temperature in that range. 50F though? no clue. since it’s right between 0 and 100 i guess it would be just right, temperature wise, so t-shirt and long pants?

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      2 months ago

      Can you remember that at temperatures near 0F and 100F, you need to take special precautions when going outside? The rest is a matter of getting used to what the numbers mean, but those are very intuitive danger points.

      • lime!@feddit.nu
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        2 months ago

        -18 is such an arbitrary place for “special precautions”. at 0, I know to start driving more carefully since the roads ice up. at -15, i know to wear long johns. at +15, i know to start using a thinner jacket. at -30, i know to use a thick hat and wax on my cheeks to prevent the blood vessels from rupturing. at +30, I know to use a large hat and sun cream on my cheeks to prevent them from burning.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 months ago

          18 is such an arbitrary place for “special precautions”

          cool little trick, you see how -18 is like, pretty close to -20, yeah. You can just round them. It really doesn’t matter

          • lime!@feddit.nu
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            2 months ago

            see, that’s what i’m saying. having a scale that starts at “it really doesn’t matter” makes it hard to use for everyday things.

            • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              2 months ago

              but it literally has numbers?

              You know that celsius starts at -273.15 degrees right? That’s ENTIRELY arbitrary, and by your logic, makes the system useless.

              you’re literally just making this up?

              • lime!@feddit.nu
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                2 months ago

                no, Celsius starts at +273.15 K, because that’s where an element we are all dependent on to live and in contact with every day undergoes an important phase transition.

                What happens at 0°F?

                • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  2 months ago

                  What happens at 0°F?

                  why does it matter? Water freezes at 32 degrees f. What happens at 32 degrees C? What happens at 212 degrees C?

                  Also no, it doesn’t start at +273.15 K, that’s not how number ranges work. If you have a list of numbers between -10 and 10. And you were to sort them, least to most, -10 would be at the bottom, obviously.

                  you realize that temperature is a measure of the energy within a substance/material right? It’s intrinsically tried to the physics and atomic structure underlying the material substance. That always starts at the lowest temperature point, the point being where it is is just a reference

                  • lime!@feddit.nu
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                    2 months ago

                    it starts at +273.15K because that is the lower of the two reference points used in its creation. the Kelvin scale was created later and builds on the Celsius scale. of course lower temps are sorted first, that’s not what matters. it’s why we call these scales “degrees”, after all.

                    why it matters is because the scale i use every day constantly gets “verified” by passing the zero marker and showing that things outside freeze. that makes it a good reference point that builds its own intuition.

                    that’s what this is all about, after all: how useful a scale is for everyday use. a scale that is relevant to my needs and that has important events happen on easy-to-remember points of the scale requires very little teaching.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      yeah no shit, but think of it this way, if you were put into a place that was 100f, you would go “damn this bitch hot out here” and if you were put into a place that was 0f you would go “damn this joint cold as fuck fr”

      Stop thinking in celsius.

      • lime!@feddit.nu
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        2 months ago

        why would i stop? there’s only one place in the world that uses another scale, and it’s dangerous for me to even travel there.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 months ago

          because we’re not talking about celsius? We’re talking about fahrenheit?

          This is like pulling up to a car meet in a semi truck, and being really confused when nobody thinks your ride is sick.

      • uienia@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        What if it was 99f? Or 1f? Would your scientific “damn this bitch hot out here” change to something else?

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 months ago

          no? Because it’s not entirely hinged around the temperature being one specific number???

          Do you think the human body is a perfectly accurate thermometer?