What annoys me is that in all of my high school science classes, I have been using the metric system, and now I have to switch if I want to pursue engineering.
The College Board sticks to metric in their AP Physics and Chemistry tests as well as the SAT IIs. If the next generation of Americans are prepared to use metric, then why not switch?
Ignoring most of the silliness of this thread, I’ll just add that it is easiest to start with 32°F=0°C and just add 9F for every 5C and 18F for every 10C. E.g., 41=5, 50=10 (another excellent easy starting point) 59=15, etc. Add or substract 2 for 1 for the smaller intervals. Easy and painless until the islands of Fahrenheit resistance do finally give up their “courageous” efforts.
Well I happen to think that the advantages of the farenheit system are pretty evident. I mean sure, the celsius system is probably easier to use once you get used to it, sure it’s calibrated against a lot of other metric measurements(definition of a gram, etc etc), sure it’s easier to convert to kelvin(the system used by most scientists), sure most everyone uses it, but farenheit has advantages of its own.
For example, say it’s summer, and you don’t want to go outside and work in the garden. Also say that it’s a pretty hot day, and when you look at the handy little celcius thermometer it says the temperature outside is almost 43 degrees. The farenheit scale on the other hand says it’s nearly 110 degrees. Now which one sounds hotter? Come on here…for purposes of whining about the heat farenheit has a clear advantage.
Now as to why it’s basically America using the farenheit system, I’m not sure. Any ideas?
Erratum, well said.
BigRoryG, yes it was at least 50% rant & 50% logic (maybe 40/60).
The emotional nicety of the 0 to 100 Fahrenheit scale is that sets of ten degrees can be grouped together like decades. It’s not so important whether its 72[sup]o[/sup] or 77[sup]o[/sup] outside, but just that its in “the seventies” rather than “the sixties”. Centigrade can’t do that.
Erratum: So you’re saying that what you posted above was from a total lack of knowledge of the system in question? Interesting.
FWIW: The so-called English measures in the United States are defined in law via the International Standards (Metric system). Sure as hell looks to me as though the Federal government recognizes the superiority of the Metric system to include the Centrigrade scale.
Never attribute to an -ism anything more easily explained by common, human stupidity.
Monty: “So you’re saying that what you posted above was from a total lack of knowledge of the system in question? Interesting.”
No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying I’ve never seen an “Engineer’s Rule”. How many people have? Why don’t you leave the snide insinuations aside, and talk about the systems on their merits. I am quite familiar with the everyday use of the imperial system and also quite familiar with the SI system from my studies.
hansel: “I have to say, Erratum, that negative numbers really aren’t such a big problem in common, everyday use of Celsius in those countries that use it. Few, if any Canadians, every mistake 20 and -20 when considering what to wear.”
I’d say that those “few” probably number more than the people who confuse 70[sup]o[/sup]F and 0[sup]o[/sup]F. How many people get confused between -5 and +5 C? Losing negative signs is an easy transcription error, and when performing calculations (e.g. delta T = 30 - -20) too many negative signs floating around is asking for trouble. Even if few people actually make the mistake, you need to waste brain power to keep from making it. You can try to tell me that if I grew up with Celcius that I wouldn’t find the gradations too big (I doubt you’d have much luck convincing me, but at least your argument would be understandable), but there is no way you will ever convince me that sign errors do not always arise whenever you have negative numbers.
I see this thread in “Great Debates”; I see this thread in “MPSIMS”; I see it here in “GQ”. I must be losing my mind!!
Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.
I thought you were talking about merits in real life. When’s the last time you had to write down a temperature? In the half of my life spent in metric countries, I can’t remember a single incidence where I confused positive and negative temperatures, except writing results in my lab notebook, and they go negative whichever system I use. There were however many incidences where Fahrenheit vs. Celsius confusion caused problems.
It also seems to me that if negative numbers are rare, it’s more likely to cause problems when they do arise. Remember Y2K? Wouldn’t have happened if business computers were invented in the 1990s. To use an extreme example, say a programmer used unsigned int for a Fahrenheit temperature - it’s much less likely to be caught than if it were in Celsius.
I’m not claiming that any of these are major advantages for the Celsius system and justify the switch. They are very minor advantages, but so are the advantages claimed by Fahrenheit proponents. The major difference, as I said before, is that one is a world standard, and the other is a US-only ‘standard.’
By the way, someone said 110F sounds hotter than 43C. To me, 43C sounds much hotter, and I didn’t believe it was the same till I calculated it. I guess it’s because I’ve suffered 100F but not 40C, so a number in 40’s sounds far hotter than 100’s. Just goes to show you (or at least shows me) that perception depends totally on what you’re used to.
I’m sure newspaper never had to transfer a forcast from the National Weather Service to their weather pages. And in places where the weather is very volitale that messed up - would probably anger more people if it were attached to a °C rather than a °F.
The big argument for change seems to be, “The rest of the world is doing it.” Well yeah and it probably makes sense for all the other measures, but the only place where Fahrenheit is used largely here is in weather forecasting and reporting. It is not like meterologist are a large part of our international trade.
Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.
In case anyone interested wanted to know, there is also a “Great Debates” version of this game (also started by Hail Ants).
This whole debate is farcical. I can’t believe that anyone feels this strongly about a particular temperature scale, or takes these after-the-fact justifications of either system seriously.
I have never mistaken the temperature because of a transcription error in the sign, and I have never heard of/from anyone who did. You know why? Because I grew up with Celsius, and I’m used to it, and it just isn’t that complicated, or difficult to keep straight. Since I’ve moved to the U.S., I’ve grown used to Farenheit, and when I hear a numerical temperature, I don’t check how high or low on the scale it is, I refer to my own experience and what I associate with that bracket of figures. The 40s are coolish, the 50s pleasant, the 80s are too bleeding hot. I simply don’t care enough about the history and justification of Farenheit to ever give it more thought than that. I did the same in Canada, only it was the teens that were coolish and the thirties that were uncomfortably warm.
Never attribute to an -ism anything more easily explained by common, human stupidity.
With an attitude like that why in the world are you browsing the Straight Dope web site at all!?
I for one welcome our new insect overlords… - K. Brockman
Debate on the SDMB sometimes devolves into hairsplitting of the worst kind, much the way this one has. Erratum’s point about the danger of negative numbers is way overstated, and the defenders of Farenheit are making far too much of the 0 to 100 portion matching the general range of humanly experienced temperatures. The significance of the freezing point being a numerical milestone in Celsius seemed like a really good idea to me, until I started reading this and realized that I feel that way only because I was raised on Celsius - in other words, I’ll easily concede that whatever virtues I see in Celsius are a received bias, not a reasoned appreciation. As I’ve read the above arguments, I’ve seen nothing that doesn’t look like more of the same.
Defenders of Farenheit, would you recommend to Canada that we switch back to Farenheit, considering the cost, considering the not insignificant cost?
I can think of only two reasons the U.S. should switch to Celsius. The first is that having a general system in use that’s different from the scientific standard impairs science education in a small way, and to my mind betrays a teeny-weeny anti-science bias. This is not a good enough reason to switch, since learning science means learning a battery of new ways to measure things and new scales for comparison.
The second is that, overall, it would be better for the U.S. to have the same weights and measures as the rest of the world, for reasons of convenience in trade, science and engineering. I work at a manufacturer with a Japanese parent company, and we sell to Canada and Mexico as well as domestically, which means we have to operate in both imperial and metric, and this causes small headaches now and then, as it does for any enterprise or activity that operates internationally. Synchronizing U.S. weights and measures with the rest of the world would eliminate a lot of small headaches like we experience. Given that social inertia is all that’s holding current U.S. weights and measures in place, switching is probably a good idea, but it’s understandable why no one is really is really anxious for it, given the larger number of headaches involved involved in chagning over, along with the cost of rewriting textbooks and roadsigns.
If I’ve let my irritation show, I apologize. What’s been bothering me about this debate has been the refusal of the loudest participants to concede that the real determinant in using Farenheit or Celsius is “it’s what we use now, and it’s works fine”.
Never attribute to an -ism anything more easily explained by common, human stupidity.
I can’t believe the moderator is letting this go on in two forums, GQ & GD.
Hansel:
The first line of my OP says that I’m ignoring the “that’s how we’ve always done it” factor. I’m not saying it would be sensible for any country to actually switch, as I also said being an arogant American I’m not switching any time soon! My rant was based mostly on the theory behind the two. Specifically, that the Celcius scale is the one so-called metric measurement that, if you examine it, isn’t really better. I still stand behind that, And this web site is the perfect place for such a rant!
I for one welcome our new insect overlords… - K. Brockman
*Hail Ants: Temperature is not like inches or quarts. If you have two cups of water, both at 70[sup]o[/sup] F and you pour them together you don’t get 140[sup]o[/sup] F water. *
No, but you do get 2 cups of 70[sup]o[/sup] water. (Kinda like that chicken-and-a-half problem.)
Now, if you had the two separate cups of water and took heat energy from one to lower it to 40[sup]o[/sup] and put that energy into the other, the second one’s temperature would go up to 100[sup]o[/sup].
What would Brian Boitano do / If he was here right now /
He’d make a plan and he’d follow through / That’s what Brian Boitano would do.
Dead ants, your ignorance is amazing! Your stupidity is too trite to address, but yet how can I resist? :rolleyes:
No such thing as metric (C) temperature? Oh? And like there IS such a thing as F temps??? So, by your definition, is there such a thing as Rankine or Kelvin temps, then? Just because temps do not add in a linear fashion, you wish to chuck the whole metric system?
Bravo! So, like if I told you that I added 30 gal of water at 100 F to 10 gal of water at 40 F, you can now, obviously, tell me the temp of the mix at equilibrium, right? I mean, I DID use non-Celcius units, so go ahead…solve the problem! So, like if can’t add linearly, then I won’t add at all? Maybe we should chuck vectors, too?
You know, you can express temp or any other quantity in whatever units you like. The units are simply manmade! Just for you, you can express temp in erkburgles if you wish!
I’m so sorry your mind is too small to comprehend the metric system and SI units. I believe units have yet to be invented to measure how small your closed mind must be!
Hey, did you know more and more civil projects are being done totally metric? So, because I can add distances in a linear fashion, I guess you have nothing against this? I hope this meets your approval because on newer highways, you will be seeing
distances expressed in km…even with km markers in lieu of mile markers!
Heck, if you can’t run with the big dogs, then stay on the porch! There’s nothing impractical about the mertic system, and your defense of “using light years to measure a sparkplug gap” IS a very lame example. 
Americans are against the metric system because they are against foreign “rulers”.
“your defense of “using light years to measure a sparkplug gap” IS a very lame example.”
How about using light years to measure astronomical distances? Shouldn’t you metric proponents be pushing the petameter, or something? You can’t multiply the light-year by ten and get any other unit. You probably couldn’t even tell me the mass of water in a one light-year by one light-year by one light-year cube, which we all know is the cornerstone (and apparently the most useful part, judging by how you guys go on about it) of the metric system. I don’t believe that you guys are so painfully unscientific.
I can’t either. Then again, “the moderator” doesn’t read GD and has to rely on more informed and concerned members to alert him via email should such things go awry. I see the OP learned how to spell “celsius” as a result of the post in GQ - mission accomplished. The rest of the argument is too insipid to live.