ftg: Cite? (For part b., to b precise.)
Oh, and I disagree with the idea of using `degrees Kelvin’ at all, especially around the clueles. Why give them bad ideas when you know they don’t know any better?
BTW, just for the record, there is a legitimate concept of ‘negative Kelvins’ in physics. Like many such paradigm-breakers, it turns out not to mean what you’d casually guess. Temperatures below absolute zero fall into two categories. One category, usually limited to a fraction of a degree below absolute zero, is a bit of a semantic game that involves adjustments in entropy at or near absolute zero, and probably isn’t used anymore. The other, which is indeed still used in ‘extreme physics’, defines negative temperatures as being higher than infinite Kelvins. It sounds weird, but it actually makes a great deal of sense. I’d suggest Googling it - there are quite a few pages that describe it to people with varying degrees of background (SciAm had a good one, but SciAm reorganizes its site periodically, and breaks all my bookmarks and links)
Here’s a simple page from the San Francisco Exploratorium (a science museum) to get you started:
http://isaac.exploratorium.edu/~pauld/activities/energylevelmodel/negativetemperature.html
Derleth, you are responsible for backing your original statement. It’s not my job to disprove your claim, it’s your job (and therefore your time) to back it up.
I would also like a cite on anyone else using the phrase “degrees Kelvin” in this thread. I can only find you using that term.
ftg: I was wrong. Now, would that have been so hard for you to do? I was literally three seconds with Google and chasing down links.
And as for using `degrees Kelvin’ now: It is wrong. The NIST says it’s wrong, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures says it’s wrong, and the SI has been defined to make it wrong. It couldn’t be more wrong without being mathematically wrong. (My cite, incidentally, backs up this whole paragraph. Where’s your cite saying it’s acceptable?)