I’m assuming this was officially changed somewhere down the line since all of the old farts say Centigrade and us younger, cooler people say Celsius. Anyone know why? When?
>> all of the old farts say Centigrade
Actually the old farts say Fahrenheit but they’re slowly dying of so let’s just humor them 
sailor: The US has decided to let Europe keep its weights and measures.
We can console ourselves with our economy, instead.
The centigrade scale is so called because there are 100 degrees between the freezing and boiling points of water.
However, the Celsius scale, with “water freezes = 0”, is not the only centigrade scale; the Kelvin scale, which uses Celsius degrees but puts its 0 point at absolute zero, is another.
Presumably one could invent a centigrade scale measured in Celsius degrees in which water boils at -3034 degrees and freezes at -3134 degrees, with 0 representing the boiling point of iron.
So the standard scale in which water freezes at 0 and boils at 100 has been named after the scientist who invented it.
People, you’re making too much of this! Technically, as I was taught it, Celcius was the name of the scientist who invented it, and Centigrade is the scale.
As for what Polycarp says about Kelvin, that’s a funny way of putting it. As an engineer, we say that 1 degree C = 1 degree K. And thus, Kelvin is both the man who invented the scale and the scale itself. I’ve never heard it quite put as “Kelvin uses Celcius degrees”, but I guess you could think of it like this…
- Jinx
But that equivalence only applies to measurements of temperature differences and/or changes, right?
Also, isn’t it Celsius?
Maybe I should have said that the Kelvin scale uses Celsius-sized degrees (as opposed to Fahrenheit-sized degrees, which the also-based-at-absolute-zero Rankine scale does).
BTW, a misnomer that all of us here, including myself, made, is in speaking of “degrees Kelvin” – the unit is “the Kelvin,” which is equal to one degree Celsius.
Water ice melts at 0 degrees Celsius, 32 degrees Fahrenheit, or 273.15 Kelvins.
Celsius didn’t invent the centigrade scale. He thought of a hundred divisions, but had water boiling at zero and freezing at 100. So we’re not using his scale at all.
The reason we call the centigrade scale (and saying other scales can be centigrade is just blowing smoke – the centigrade scale is 0 for freezing and 100 for boiling and any other scale divided into a hundred units would be named something else) is probably due to the severe case of anal retentiveness that afflicts those involved with metrification.
They had set up a series of rules on how abbreviations should be made. If the unit was the name of a person, it was capitalized; if it was anything else, it was lower case. But they had used a capital C for Centigrade for years. Sacre bleu! We can’t have a variation, can we? That wouldn’t be anal enough. So they searched through history and dug up some guy who didn’t even think that an increase in temperature should logically have an increase in the number of degrees. But he had a name beginning with C, which was all that mattered. Now they didn’t have to rewrite everything to fit!
The centigrade scale also is not particularly useful as a guide for the reason why most people want to know the temperature, anyway. By pure coincidence, 0-100 degrees Fahrenheit quite neatly covers the extremes of weather in the temperate areas of the world. For that reason, it’s superior to centigrade for the average person. You know that 90 degrees is pretty close to the top temperature you’ll feel, and 10 degrees is pretty close to the bottom and is a much better way to gauge.
I don’t have anything against metrification, but for temperature, Fahrenheit is superior.
But that’s only because thats what you’re used to! I have lived all my life hearing temperatures in Celsius, and I know damn well what 25 degrees is, and how comfortable I’m going to be, just as I know what 0 degs feels like, or 37, or -15. The fact of the matter is, the scale doesn’t matter, because it’s the SAME TEMPERATURE! Room temperature in Celsius or room temperature in Farenheit is the same thing to us, we just associate a different number to it. If we start counting doors in a hallway, and I start at one end and name a door “5” but you start at the other end and name it “3”, it’s still the same door. Saying that “3 is better” is just plain silly.
Well, IMHO, that is.
Since the scale doesn’t matter, we could further simplify things by making the freezing point of water 0 degrees, and the boiling point 1 degree and it would be just as useful, right?
Yes, although somewhat unweildy…I mean, having room temperature around 0.22 “Wikkits” on that scale would be fine (I mean, its just a decimalised centigrade scale), except that it would be more annoying in calculations. My point is that I think people who claim that Farenheit is “superior” are being silly, because both clearly work, and very well at that. And what I meant about “same temperature” is that we experience temperature the same way - we could choose to not quantify it, but we still feel the same thing. When speaking of “our experiences”, as RealityChuck did, it just boils down to how we choose to name it, and A or B doesn’t make a whit of difference.
Besides, I did say it was my opinion, didn’t I?
Yes. Celsius is an interval scale measurement, so it preserves ordering and the size of intervals, but not ratios, which Kelvin does.
Thus in Celsius (or Farenheit, for that matter) we cansay an entity with a measured temperature of 30 degrees C is 10 degrees hotter than an entity whose temperature is measured at 20 degrees C, but not that it is fifty % hotter, whereas when entities are measured in Kelvin, we could reason that one measured at 60 Kelvin is twice as hot as one measured at 30 Kelvin.
Well, being an American I often get into discussions (i.e. arguments :mad: ) with people who insist that Celcius is superior when in fact it’s inferior (for weather anyway).
Although its true that, like language, once you’re used to it the scale you learn becomes your ‘enate’ scale. But what erks me is how C gets considered ‘metric’ and therefore superior and all us backward, arrogant Americans should convert! Not only is there nothing metric about C, but to me F is very ‘base ten’.
In terms of weather temperature, pick a reasonable coldest to hottest and set it to a 0 to 100 scale. You get ten groups of ten, like decades. You can say its in the 50s or 60s or 70s and each one is a pretty accurate set of cold, mild, warm etc. And extremely cold (sub-zero) and extremely hot (above 100) are both appropriately ‘off the scale’. This doesn’t work nearly as well in Celcius.
I just saw an episode (#145) of the great PBS series The Mechanical Universe dealing with temperature. I was extremely pleased to finally see a respected scientist (the host, the great Dr. David Goodstein) make the point that because, unlike Kelvins, C and F are arbitrary scales you should use the right scale for the right application. That is, he said you should use F for weather, Kelvins for science, and (I loved this) because its kinda based on water properties you should use Celcius for cooking!
Of course, this is a very temperate-zone-centric outlook.
For me, a reasonable coldest-to-hottest is 20°-35° C (68°-95° F). Where I live, I rarely encounter temperatures outside this range, and 10° C (50° F) is really extremely cold. Therefore I propose a new Colibri scale (appropriately abbreviated “C”), in which 20° C = 0 and 35° C = 100. With these finer gradations, it will be much easier to express significant differences in temperature.
Of course, those of you who live in Phoenix or in Fairbanks might find other scales more appropriate.
That’s really splitting hairs. While you are correct, I’d like to know what moron in science who had nothing better to study in the universe declared this. Although I’ve never heard of Kelvin in the plural, nor have I ever heard of speaking of “the Kelvin” as a unit. (Do we say “the Fahrenheit”?) But, I have heard that, technically, there’s no need for the term “degree” whn using K for Kelvin. But, will the world end if I say “degrees Kelvin”? Maybe Lord Kelvin is rolling over in his grave as I write this. Maybe Lord K was some egotistical scientist, big man of thermo, who hated the degree symbol with a passion deeming it redundant?
And, what about Rankine? Maybe Rankine liked lemons. And, what if he declared that all temps should be expressed in lemons Rankine, right? - Jinx, boldly daring to think outside the ever so restrictive thermochemistry text.
True, but I can’t help believing that the human body is somewhat of a universal measuring stick. That is, even if the lowest it ever gets is 68°F I find it hard to believe that anyone would consider that ‘cold’! And while I can see 50°F being universally considered ‘cold’, extremely cold? I mean, even if you’re not used to it, you won’t freeze to death at 50°F like you will at 0°F.
Yeah, you can certainly say that Fahrenheit is temperate zone skewed, but I think it’s also more ‘human zone’ skewed than Celcius.
Kaylasdad99, you are correct that the 1 C = 1 K rule is true for differences. For example, a 20 degree difference in C = 20 degree difference in K. Your point of clarification is well taken because, otherwise, I’d be saying, for example, that 100 C = 100 K, and this is NOT true!
Hey, about my spelling…I’m just a braindead engineer fitting the round peg into the square hole for no known reason, and I don’t dare ask why! So, what more do you want from me? - Jinx
This sort of thing is very subjective. My Panamanian friends will in fact start complaining about being cold if it drops below about 70° (I am not exaggerating). Many of them wear sweaters in places, like labs, where the air-conditioning is set below that level. And yes, they do consider 50° to be incredibly cold, especially those who have never been to the temperate zone. Even in the mountains here it doesn’t get that frigid!
You should realize that the so-called “temperate” zone is not really suitable for human life.
No, it is completely wrong to say ‘degrees Kelvin’.
You say ‘250 Kelvins’ for the exact same reason you would say ‘250 pounds’ or ‘250 feet’. A Kelvin is a specific and quantifiable property of matter. In the same way you can say how much mass something has or how long something is, you can say how many Kelvins it has (I believe the number of Kelvins comes from the number of molecules multiplied by their average kenetic energy or something like that :)).
We don’t say ‘the Fahrenheit’ because one Fahrenheit isn’t really a measure of anything. That’s also why you can’t add or multiply degrees F or C.
Its not the biggest deal in the world, but saying ‘degrees Kelvin’ is like saying ‘knots per hour’. It doesn’t make you sound any smarter…