That makes it sound like the decades make less sense in fahrenheit.
If I can wear the same stuff for 60F as 70F and the real difference is between, say, 60F and 75F, it seems it would be awkward to talk about temperatures in the 60s versus temperatures in the 70s.
You want there to be a clearly-felt, unambiguous difference every 10 for a decades based subdivision to make sense.
But that’s not what you’d use anyway. It’s litres per 100 km.
I muddle along between the two as well. So, for example, I drive in miles and run in Ks.
I don’t use either for work and if I’m measuring something for fitting, metric seems a lot easier so that’s generally the default.
It’s just not an issue - if there’s a problem it takes 20 seconds to go online and convert.
I once read (but did not double check anywhere to verify, because I’m not sure where I’d look) that the origin of the 2-liter soda bottle is that sodas manufacturers wanted to sell 1/2 gallons, but market research suggested that people wouldn’t buy it because they’d feel gluttonous buying that much soda in one bottle-- this was when you could still get those 8oz bottles of soda, were still major sellers, and the bigger ones were considered something that mostly people in their 20s, who were slightly irresponsible anyway, drank. It didn’t matter that the 1/2 gallon was being marketed as multi-serving.
So they were named “2-liter,” a measurement Americans weren’t familiar with, and put into giant versions of regular bottles. Even though you could look at them and clearly see what you were getting, people found them less objectionable than 1/2 gallon jugs.
Oh, for a time when “feeling gluttonous” was a turn-off…
In Fahrenheit, there is.
But in Celsius, a difference of well under 10 is still huge,
It gets me when I listening to the radio. I’ll be driving along on a nice spring day enjoying the music and there’ll a weather report which casually mentions the temperature tomorrow is going to be eighteen degrees. And it takes me a second to realize we’re not getting an unseasonable Arctic front moving in but rather I’ve been listening to a Toronto station without realizing it.
OK, but I was replying to GreasyJack who seemed to be implying otherwise.
Yes, but what I said was that for a decades-based system of referring to temperatures to be useful, you need at least a noticeable, clear difference every 10 degrees. A clear difference every 6 degrees, say, would indeed come under “at least”.
But to be clear, I’m not saying that either temperature scale is “better”. Just questioning some of the reasons people are giving for suggesting F makes more sense than C.
I doubt any of us have interviewed enough “average americans” to answer your question satisfactorily.
the F temperature unit is a more useful size. the defining values for the scale changed for what might be useful then and could be marked by hand. the high end defining value was body temperature.
We’re talking “is it sweater weather or jacket weather?” not doing precision chemistry here. It doesn’t matter that there is no literal dividing line at the 10’s; the scale is still such that talking about temperatures in general terms (be it 60’s/70’s, high 60’s/low 70’s) is generally more useful with Fahrenheit than Celsius. To belabor the decades analogy a little further, it’s like how culturally the decades obviously don’t line up to the dates (the “60’s” running into 1974 and such) but they’re still useful to talk about in general terms.
I don’t think Fahrenheit is necessarily superior, I was mostly just arguing against wolfpup’s claim that since you can’t feel a 1 degree Celsius difference that there’s no advantage to a finer temperature scale.
The metric system is extremely easy to learn and for most purposes is very intuitive. You couldn’t think of a better point for “water freezes” than zero. By any objective analysis the standard system is less intuitive and harder to learn. It’s not really a debatable thing; a kid will learn metric easier. It just makes more sense.
However, what you learn as a child is what sticks with you, and changing AFTER that is hard, just as a child can learn a language really easily but an adult will always carry an accent and little peccadilloes of their mother tongue.
I live in both worlds, being a Canadian born in 1971. We were taught metric but our parents used standard, and U.S. media exposes you to standard units. In some respects we use standard to this day; my children have never been taught the standard system in school, but will express their height and weight in feet/inches and pounds, like I will. If you told me you were 170 centimetres tall, I would have to stop and think for a moment to figure out how tall you were. If you said “she weighs 71 kilograms” I have to do some quick math to arrive at the woman’s weight in a way I understand.
In other respects, I and most Canadians think in metric. Miles are vastly inferior to kilometres; I think of distances in KM, without exception. Temperature in the F scale is just silly; I know the basic points (32 is freezing, 65-70 is room temperature, 80 a nice summer day, 90+ very hot, 212 water boils) but otherwise it’s a weird system and I’d prefer to see it expressed in C.
It just all depends on what you’re measuring and so what becomes the standard means of expression in English. How tall am I? Six-one, and I say that because everyone says their height that way. How far is it from here to Ottawa? About 450 kilometers. How far apart are the bases on a baseball diamond? Ninety feet, because that the the way the rules are expressed. What’s a good distance to run to see how fast someone can sprint? One hundred metres, because, again, that’s simply how we express ourselves in that context. How big is a big atomic bomb? A megaton - inherently a STANDARD measurement, expressed in tons - because that’s the context.
Of course one lives between both worlds in many ways. The architectural drawings for my house are in feet and inches. There is no particular reason it needs to be this way, but it is.
The bolded portion brings to mind a lyric from one of my favorite songs of the late '80s, and my puzzlement (and epiphany):
Young naive me: “45 degrees? why would diesel be steaming and boiling?*”
<epiphany>Oh, Australia. That’s 45 Celsius. Um… *(math math math)*113 F. Ow, that’s pretty warm. That’s appropriate for a deep desert.</epiphany>
And that song, and that epiphany, is the only intuitive feel I have for what’s “hot” in Celsius. I guess you take what you can get.
*A little later I realized that even 45C is too cold to boil diesel, so the lyrics probably was talking about steaming radiators… “diesels” being diesel-powered vehicles broken down due to overheating. I learned a lot from Midnight Oil.
And, of course, the notion of “clear difference” will vary considerably between individual.
My anecodte, as an Amercan accustomed to the Imperial system:
Me, and pretty everyone I’ve ever known who’s cared to comment on this topic, have a clear mental delineation between “50-degree days”, “60-degree days”, and so on. Since true bitter cold is non-existent in Louisana, everything below30F or so is lumped into the same bucket. But the distinctions between days “in the 70s”, “in the80s”, etc. are well understood.
IMHO, the 60s F are kind of an in-between stage, depending on cloud cover, humidity, and wind. A 62 F overcast day with a stiff breeze will be sweater or windbreaker weather for many people locally. Yet a sunny, calm 68 F day is comfortable for most people in a T-shirt and shorts.
To me, the Celsius scale degrees are a little too big for “The Twenties”, say, to be meaningful. Better to me are expressions of Celsius temperature with just a bit more precision - the “mid-twenties”, the “low thirties”, etc.
Of course not; it’s a continuous scale.
To explain better what I’m saying, here’s an analogy:
Let’s say I propose a system of splitting the visible spectrum into bands, numbered 1, 2, 3, …
Now, if people generally can’t tell the difference between the colour at the start of band 1 and the colour at the start of band 2, that system looks quite clunky and not so useful. People would suggest I make the bands wider.
There should be a very clear difference every band otherwise there doesn’t seem much point putting them in bands in the first place.
Earlier you were saying that a 10F difference is not so much and you’d wear the same clothes etc. And suggesting that as the reason fahrenheit works better for a decades-based way of referring to temperatures. But that makes it sound like it doesn’t work so well to me, analogous to the colour example.
I don’t think either system is better, but I would agree with wolfpup that there’s no advantage to a finer temperature scale in everyday life (obviously in science or technology there is, but in such fields there’s no problem just using more decimal places anyway).
For me I just need to know how much clothing I need to wear, and whether I am likely to feel hot or cold if I’m outside a while. For that, I only need to know the temperature to within about 3 C / 5.5 F
That metric system cost us one good martian probe.
Normally when I hear the metric system, I first quick and dirty convert it to apx equivalent units just to get the order of magnitude correct. As such ‘l’ becomes ‘qts’ at a 1:1 ratio. Meters become yards also at a 1:1 (and then into feet at 1:3), even km becomes miles and kg become lbs at 1:1 (again just getting a order of magnitude ballpark). Temperature, -40F=-40C, 32F=0C is my general basis for the equivalent apx. which means I only really use C when it is in the lower range and close to those numbers.
For the most part I do find the imperial system more human centric (a foot comes from the size of a foot, 0F and 100F is the range of normal temperatures that we experience, ), and does have some great history of humanity connected to it (a ache is the amount that can be plowed in a day, a bushel is a basket size to carry stuff), and some real archaic stuff too. It is a interesting system and gives real insight as to how we used to live and how that is still valid and useful today.
The metric system is, well not so much interesting does not have this rich human history connected to it, and to me, seems to be disconnected from intuitive thinking. A great example is the meter, which was some arbitrary fraction of a meridian in Paris, now defined and set to some weird fraction of the speed of light. Yes both defined how long a meter is, however by taking the fraction (and it was not a easy fraction), means it is impractical to use the origin to derive the meter size. It is not the same intuitiveness as a foot is the size of a foot.
But much good has come out of the metric system, in particular metric sized bolts. It is much easier to have a set of tools in mm then in fractions of inches divided into 1/32 units.
I read everywhere that "a foot comes from the size of a foot", but few people these days have 12" feet and surely that was even less likely way back when…
A yard is a pace… Really? I am 6’ tall and have to stretch out to pace a yard.
The top segment of my thumb is 1¼" which is a 25% error if that is the basis of an inch.
As far as I can see; imperial has only two advantages over metric: It is easily subdivided and we grew up using it.
Many Americans do not even know our own system of measurements. 25 years ago, I asked for eight ounces of roast beef at the deli counter. She had no idea what I was talking about. She only knew decimal fractions of a pound.
And American measurements aren’t really so easily-divided, either. What’s a third of a pound? What’s a fifth of a foot? What’s a quarter of a stone? There are some divisions that are easy for any given unit, but it’s not always the same ones, and all other divisions are difficult. For metric units, meanwhile, you can do fifths and halves (which is at least better than the sevenths and halves that stones give you), and you can also do any other fraction you want if you have some means of doing arithmetic.
I have some intuition with length and mass, not so much with pressure or anything else more complicated. Working with the numbers is easy enough, I just don’t think in those units.