To tell you the truth, i have a hard time believing that anyone can really, in a blind study, walk outside and tell the temperature to the nearest half-degree celcius. Because that is the sort of accuracy you need in order to make a reasonable argument for the fahrenheit system over celcius.
And half a degree C is 0.9 degrees F.
I really doubt that many people can walk outside and say, “Wow, it’s 72 today, not 73, not 71.” In fact, most Americans, in my experience, when talking about the weather, often do so in more general terms. “It feels like it’s in the high 70s” or “They say it’s going to get into the mid 90s today.” Hell, given the inherent imperfections in weather forecasting, one could even argue that a marger scale like celcius makes more sense.
You’re welcome to prefer the fahrenheit system. I just find some of the attempts to justify that preference through some appeal to the inherent logic of the system to be a bit laughable, that’s all.
When Canada went metric in the mid 70s, the announcer on our morning radio came out with
0 is freezing
10 is not
20 is pleasing
30 is hot
That about says it.
Incidentally, the story of Fahrenheit that I heard is that originally 0 was intended as the freezing point of saturated brine, since saturated brine was easier to come by than pure water and 100 was intended to be body temperature. Then after the metric system was devised and they wanted to sescribe the relation between the two scales. the formula 5/9 deg C + 32 was the most reasonable approximation they could come up (other formulas would need a fraction more complicated than 9/5 or a non-integer zero point adjustment) and if this meant that body termerature was now 98.6F, so be it. Of course, that temperature is only an average and everyone I know is normally lower. My wife and I both register around 97F, at least on arising.
As far as which scale is better, what a silly question. Whatever you feel most comfortable with is better.
About 30 years ago I occupied a furnished apartment in Zuerich. OUtside the bathroom window was a thermometer that read in C and R(eaumur), the latter being exactly 4/5 the former. I quickly discovered that the sum of the C and R temperatures + 32 was the F temperature.
Isn’t there a <metric unit of> energy, specifically defined such that it will raise one <metric unit of> volume of pure water exactly 1° Celsius in exactly one {minute or second} at exactly sea level?
What’s the justification for degrees Fahrenheit? It fails both at being a scientific and an everyday standard. Sure, the lowest temperature in the winter of 1708 in Dresden and Fahrenheit’s own body temperature are important, but are they important enough to base a temperature scale on? It’s so arbitrary.
It’s the amount of heat energy need to raise one gram of water by one degree celcius at a pressure of one atmosphere. I’m not sure what the ambient temperature requirement is, but i’m sure there is one.
Note that this type of calorie is different from the ones you read about on food packaging, although there is some relationship.
As an American with an electronic thermostat in F, I can say that though I would not be able to guess the temperature to 1 degree F (in part because humidity plays too much a factor to be accurate), I can feel a difference in 1 degree. If given the opportunity to purchase a thermostat that had degrees F in even numbers only, I would gladly pay more for one with higher precision. (This presumes the system can maintain a steady temperature. I stayed in an apartment in Japan, and the heat pump did not maintain a uniform temperature, so integer degrees C were a sufficient precision.)
I never use decimals for normal everyday usage. Nor do people ever tell me “it’s 20.4 °C over here”. Roughly, when I’m at home, it too cold below 20°C and too hot above 27°C. My thermometer doesn’t even have graduations smaller than 1°C. I just don’t need such a resolution. Would a system where room temperature would be something like 1 256 870 °Z be better because it has a better resolution?
And even if it were somehow useful, in what way is it more convenient to say 74° F than 7.4 °C?
The French picked Celsius for one & only one reason- the despised English used Fahrenheit. That’s also the reason why a meter doesn’t equal a yard, or a liter doesn’t equal a quart, and so forth.
It would have been easy to pick a standard “English” measure and design a “Metric” system around it. For example- they could have started with "1 meter= 1 yard’ and gone on from there. But they didn’t. Nor, in general are the Metric measures “human -freindly”. Note the need for such terms as a "hectare’ and a “metric tonne”.
F is every bit as "metric’ as C.
F is more useful in weather and other such day-to-day usages, as rarely does one need to concern oneself with negative numbers. On the other hand -C comes in quite a bit in everyday weather. 0 and 100 are generally extremes of weather- something we use daily rather than a need to tell at what temp water boils or freezes.
Coming from Saskatchewan, this “argument” has always struck me as being utterly ludicrous. 0F is a bit nippy, but in no way is it on the low end of ordinarily experienced temperatures. A typical year in Saskatoon will experience temperatures from -50F to 100F, an occasionally it will hit -60F or 105F. (No, that’s no including wind chill, that’s the actual temperature.)
Therefore, I propose an entirely new temperature scale where 0 is set to -40F and 100 is set to 100F. Because such a scale would be just so much more right! :rolleyes:
Of course not. If they had chosen an existing unit, it would have been a French one. Why would they have picked a foreign unit, and even if they have had some reason to do so, why a British one rather than a Italian or German one? Your statement just doesn’t make sense.
So, a meter migt have equalled a “toise” (something like 2 meters), and a liter a “setier” for instance, but certainly not a british yard or quart. They precisely defined the metre the way they did because it was somehow “universal” by being related to the earth circumference.
Nah, it just proves how rarely anything freezes in Texas. When it happens, it’s noteworthy enough to adopt what I refer to as the “IT’S FRACKING COLD OUTSIDE” scale.
On a somewhat unrelated note, a few weeks ago the temperatures hit 50 degrees for the first time in a good while here in College Station. I’m sitting at a table with a friend of mine from Laredo, and she’s complaining about how bitterly cold it is outside. At about the same time, another friend of mine from Canadia walks in, complaining that the ROTC uniforms he has to wear at Texas A&M don’t include shorts for this warm weather.
Of course not, it was merely symbolic. And by the way, keeping the physical attribute of some king wouldn’t have flown well at this time.
As for the Paris meridian : was it out of nationalism, or plainly out of convenience? It’s not like they could conveniently spend years measuring the Greenwich Meridian during the revolution and napoleonic wars.
Let’s say I have two digital thermometers: one that displays Celsius, and another that displays Fahrenheit. Let’s also assume the Celsius thermometer has a readability of XXX.XX °C, and the Fahrenheit thermometer has a readability of XXX.XX °F (which is typical for IPRT thermometers).
Finally, let’s say the temperature changed from 422 K to 423 K (exact) for both readouts.
On the Celsius thermometer, the readout changed from 148.85 °C to 149.85 °C. On the Fahrenheit thermometer, the readout changed from 299.93 °F to 301.73 °F.
The Celsius thermometer changed by 100 digits. The Fahrenheit thermometer changed by 180 digits.
Same scenario, but the temperature changed from 149 K to 150 K (exact) for both readouts.
On the Celsius thermometer, the readout changed from -124.15 °C to -123.15 °C. On the Fahrenheit thermometer, the readout changed from -191.47 °F to -189.67 °F.
The Celsius thermometer (again) changed by 100 digits. The Fahrenheit thermometer (again) changed by 180 digits.
So for a fixed number of significant digits, a Fahrenheit thermometer will always have better resolution than a Celsius thermometer when measuring changes in temperature. This little hint can be quite useful in the lab when using a digital temperature readout with a °C/°F switch. If the °C doesn’t have enough resolution for you, simply switching it to °F will give you almost twice as much resolution.
…assuming that the Fahrenheit reading isn’t just a conversion from the Celsius one. Which is a big assumption to make, if you’re concerned about such fine accuracy.
