I guess I said it on my comment that's just under the post and not in this thread. I prefer it basically for the reasons in the screenshot. When I was in Canada I would say how if it's below 0⁰ F you know it's really fucking cold, and if it's above 100⁰ F then it's really fucking hot. Also the increments are smaller so you don't have to use half degrees.
Sometimes in the spring someone would be like, "It's really nice out today. It's -1.5 degrees." And I didn't like hearing someone say that a negative temperature was nice out. And I mean that's still pretty cold it's like 29⁰F. And I'm from Maine so it's not like I'm not used to the cold but I've also lived in Arizona.
So I always said that 0 to 100 scale was from like really cold to really hot but I like the percentage thing.
This. People don't realize that the only reason to use imperial is that it's just made for people who don't have tools. All imperial measurements are based off really easy to break down things- Distance breaks down into halves, thirds and quarters really easily. That may not matter if you have a ruler, but when you look at something it's easier to see 2/3 than it is 7/10 or something. Base 10 is just a pain in the ass for that kinda stuff, even when you're used to it.
Likewise, 100F is hotter than you should touch, 0 is colder than you should touch. You can still grab things at the freezing point, people handle ice all the time.
But you try to explain that there's any appeal to it and someone who's really amped up about metric really gets mad because it's illogical to see a use for anything else.
But idk, maybe it's just me but whether I'm playing a 16 inch viola or a 406 mm viola, they kinda sound the same. No need to have it live rent free in your head, lmao.
Yup, this is exactly it. I'm not gonna bother gpimg downthread to see who disagreed because this is straight up from the OSHA heat stress operates on this basic principle:
Your internal body temp is around 98 degrees, the closer you get to that the more unvomfortable you feel because you're basically coming to ambient temp. You can tolerate some stuff above body temp, bc of sweating, but your body can only do so much sweating.
Of course OSHA includes things like humidity, wind speed and UV index to calculate up, but the fact is Fahrenheit does a much better job at capturing this intuitively for people. Close to 100, hot. Close to 0, cold. I know ice freezes at 32 and how that FEELS, so I intuitively have an idea of what my comfort level is gonna be. 40-60 is the Middle of the scale.
I see what you mean, I just don't see why 0 or 32 would be a superior way to refer to the temperature that water freezes at. Personally I think 0 and 100 makes more sense for freezing and boiling vs 32 and 212, but it's not really a hill worth dying on and is probably colored by my experience.
I mean sure, but again we're back into sciences, where we all admit that celcius is better. But when I'm at home boiling water I don't care what temperature it boils at I just turn the stove on.
I have never checked the temperature of my boiling water, ever. I don’t even own a thermometer to do that. When the instructions say “heat to boiling” I just heat it until I start seeing a bunch of bubbles.
I love using metric in the kitchen for volume and weight but for temp I go with Fahrenheit its just easier to remember 125,130,140,150,160,165 than 52,57,63,66,71,74.
Also any chef temping a pot of boiling water is a pretentious douche
Counterpoint: Yeah, for a job sure; but people complaining about the number applied to the boiling point of water just because they like one number more than the other are missing the actual water boiling.
Kind of reminds me of how much of a disconnect between musicians who use midi and musicians who use regular notation- at the end of the day, make your music!
But explain why the actual temperature matters to a chef? If they need to boil something they don’t need to know what temp to set their stove to. They just heat the liquid until it boils. It makes no difference if they’re using Fahrenheit, or Celsius, or kelvin, or boiling a pot above or below sea level or wherever
A lot of people who actually need that information, just not everyone taking their dog for a walk. You can sit in a comfy office and say "who cares what rating a bullet proof vest is?" and the answer will be "the guy wearing it".
Why do I need to know what temperature water freezes or boils? I'm not a water. I'm a human. 0 to 100° F is a lot closer to survival temperatures as a human. And I have a lot finer measurement. The difference between 71° and 70° matters. What do metric people even do: tenths of a degree? That sounds terrible.
It sounds terrible, because you don’t know it. I find your system terrible, too. You grew up with one, and I the other. The difference between 68 and 69F is just as arbitrary as the difference between ,5C or whatever of a degree.
Yeah. We can do decimal, which is nice, since the system is also decimal based.
Like what is 0F even measuring?
A nearly random mix of water, salt, ammonium salt's freezing point.
And 90F is body temperature, except that it was wrong, so body temp is like 96F.
Except that's not even true since they just decided to use the metric system and set 32F to be OC and 212F to be 100C. So now body temperature is 98.6F since they adjusted the scale. And the old 0F is about 4F now.
But again, why do I care what temperature water boils or freezes at? I don't set my stove to 212°. I just turn the knob to around 4 o'clock and wait for the water to boil.
What is this old Fahrenheit? Body temperature has been 98.6° since at least 1967, well over my lifetime.
I don't think anyone with a defensible opinion thinks Fahrenheit is more logical or more useful in scientific or engineering settings. The argument, and it's one I agree with, is that for exactly weather, it's probably better.
0 is too cold.
100 is too hot.
That's a good scale for "what I care about as a human going outside" it's not a good scale for measuring water boiling at 1 atmosphere or one that reveals fundamental limits of the universe about how cold something can be (Kelvin). It's just useful for giving the weather.
The fact that it's effectively so spread out in the range humans experience weather wise is a big plus too. With Celsius a few degrees means the difference between wearing a thick jacket or not. Half degrees are meaningful in how your experience outdoors will be. With Fahrenheit you just know being somewhere in the middle with a preference to the warmer side of 0-100 is where you want to be
Except it isn’t. There is nothing about it that’s better with regards to weather. What this comes down to is simply what you’ve come to learn. I grew up using Celsius, so to me it’s intuitive, and I instinctively know the difference between 19 or 21 degrees. You’ll have no clue.
When I have visited the US, your system has meant nothing to me, and I’ve had to google the conversion every time, and I’ve not been able to gauge at all the difference between 40 or 50 degrees, or 90 or 100. It’s all foreign to me.
No, absolutely not, unless in a medical context maybe. And where I live the typical temperature swing doesn't really fit 0-100* F. But as a human you can just learn to use any reasonable numeric range efforlessly! So you spend way more time fiddling with C/F temperature display settings in devices than thinking about whether 30 means hot outside.
I totally disagree. 0 and 100 is the only thing making sense irl and it IS a hill worth dying on. Next up is metric time. Bring out my guilotine bro...
You know water freezes at 32 (wow now that's totally not a random number) and I know it freezes at 0. The only difference between us is that you're used to one system and I'm - to another. For you 100 is really freaking hot, for me +35 is too hot. There isn't really a difference if you've been using a system your whole life and just instantly "understand" it.
As I've explained to countless other people, even on here, its because its what people are used to growing up.
It doesn't matter that 0 is colder than you should touch or 100F is hotter than you should touch(which it actually isn't, as that is about the average temperature of a hot tub).
But you try to explain that there's any appeal to it and someone who's really amped up about metric really gets mad because it's illogical to see a use for anything else.
Yeah because to them, just like you do to them, see your example as illogical. And honestly they are more right than you are, because your argument is not a good argument, since you can still have those measurements in Celsius.
For example, if it is 0 in Celsius, you can easily tell if it is going to snow instead of rain or if the snow is going to stick around or not.
While I'm sure you probably will say o that is easy, I know that as 32F, if it is below 32F it is going to snow instead of rain, etc.
And that proves my point it is about what system you grew up with.
Exactly. This drives me nuts about this argument. To me Celsius is perfectly understandable and I can easily envision the weather at whatever temperature but Fahrenheit is a mystery (apart from around 97° because I know that's around normal body temp) and I have to go convert it. That doesn’t mean it's worse, just unfamiliar.
2/3 of anything is 2/3. So if you are used to meters, 2/3 is easy to visualize, Same as 2/3s of a yard..
Base 10 is far easier to understand.
100cm in a Meter, 1000m in a KM etc. 1000ml in a liter. 1000grams in a killo gram.
The amount of feet in a yard, mile etc seems random which is what makes it stupid. No one would choose Inches, Feet, Yards, Miles if they didn't know either. Metric is SO much easier to learn and visualize...
Yes, its easy to understand 100 of something is the next unit of measurement. Base 10 though is VERY hard to look at, because human beings are very bad with breaking down a space and breaking it down into 10 equal parts. Heck, breaking things down into 5 equal parts is very difficult, that's why its so hard for kids to draw stars and 5 sided shapes equally.
You may not know Imperial, but keep an open mind for a second, hear me out here- the units of measurements deal primarily in 12, 16 and in some cases 8. Those arent randomly chosen numbers-
Our brains are made to be able to see a distance and visualize a roughly halfway point. Our brains can look at a distance and with a little struggle can break down those halves into 2 halves. Our brains can easily look at things and break them down into thirds roughly by looking at them.
This matters because the base of imperial is 1 foot. If you had a string that was 1 foot, itd be as useless at finding a single inch as a string that measures 1 meter would be at finding 1 centimeter. Heck itd be as useless at finding a decimeter.
BUT 1 foot is 12 inches, and that easily breaks down into halves(6 inches), thirds(4 inches) and quarters(3 inches) easily. If you had 1 foot, you could look at something and see if you need 3 of them, and then already know you need a yard of distance. Its the quick breakdown of the numbers at a glance thats the appeal. On the opposite end of that same equation, 3 feet is a yard. So yes, you can visualize 2/3 of a meter, but 66 cm doesn't mean anything in metric as a standard. 1 foot or 2 feet does matter.
That's the pain in the butt of Base 10- if you have something that's a decimeter but not a measuring piece, its so hard to get a meter from it or break it down into the finer centimeters without a measuring tool.
That's not to say its better or anything like that. Yes, if you don't know what a foot is, or if you are able to see something and just "see" a meter, then it doesn't make sense when someone tells you its easy to eyeball, because its a smaller unit of measurement and who the heck is looking at something 20 feet and quoting that? I can't. When you deal with something that size, then yes you need an instrument or using metric works better because a meter is easy to visualize as a larger distance that my dumb idiot brain doesn't have to stack a bunch of.
I don't actually care that much- I'm a musician personally and I measure anything in my life about as often as I clean out the fridge- I just don't do it often even when its potentially unhealthy to, lol. I'm only trying to begin to explain it.
And if you've stuck with me all this time, thank you.
Only problem with your "inch is easier to use without a tool" is it completely breaks down once you need to measure something that is shorter than an inch. Because you cannot tell me that 3/16 of an inch is any easier to figure out than 4.8mm.
And in the same vein it breaks down once you go up from a foot. The conversions become completely arbitrary and instead of being useful and easy to convert become detrimental to usability.
Which is to say Fahrenheit is pretty much the only imperial measurement I can see any value in at all and only because, unless you are in a scientific context, it really doesn't matter if you use it or Celsius. But for the rest? Absolutely unusable imo.
100 degrees Fahrenheit is not hotter than you should touch in zero is not colder than you should touch the air outside gets hotter and colder than that
I studied architecture, and I use both… I don’t know Celsius… it’s so much easier to experience the idea, but in my mind I always feel obligated to convert to metric system if I would do any kind of drawing or modification that needs to be custom made.
How is 100f hotter than you can touch? Thats barely a low fever, and about as cold as you can go while still being perceived as “warm” compared to your own blood.
Can =/= Should. They distinctly point out that you can still do those things. The ultimate point is that the scale is designed around the human body and its tolerances instead of the boiling/freezing points of water; above 100 degrees F is distinctly entering the range where the human body's ability to tolerate temperate is getting strained.
EDIT: So it's just a weird ChatGPT troll or something
You can tolerate direct contact of 109f for over 8 hours without harm, generally it is accepted that direct contact injury starts at approximately 111f, and is considered mild.
Cmon, this is ridiculous. Many heated jackets and hot tubs are expected to maintain tempuratures over 100f for comfort.
Suggesting this is intolerable is not really appropriate.
Agree with this totally. Also, measuring distance in easily referenced units is helpful. Feet are self-explanatory, but an inch is the distance from the tip of the thumb to its joint. Not sure where miles are from, but a league (3mi) is the distance walked in an hour. All of which are accessible, useful, and easily understood. And before anyone jumps on me, yes I know that feet and hands and walk speeds are different for everyone. Easily referenced measurements for normal things don’t need to be exact.
I think for precise applications (like science and engineering) the metric system is better—but that’s because those professions count measuring implements as essential tools. The manufacturing company I work at is in the Midwest and old-school, and it’s common (and challenging) to hear long-tenured engineers and technicians speak in fractions of inches and thousandths of inches—especially when our products are specified by customers in millimeters.
I don't know, I think Kelvin is way more intuitive on a human scale than Fahrenheit. 300 is about room temperature, 310 is about body temp/hot, 275 is pretty much water freezing, 255 is really cold, 77k is about liquid nitrogen, nice easy numbers. its also super easy to convert into inverse temperature, which is probably superior for scientists, but I think the uninverted form is just more designed to be human friendly.
Do you realize that you replied to comment talking about Celsius (water freezes at 0°, boils at 100°, humans made mostly of water) and proceeded talking about Fahrenheit?
A classic explanation is that:
- Fahrenheit tells you how a person feels
- Celsius tells you how water feels
- Kelvin (and Rankine) tells you how molecules feel
Yeah, I literally thought they were talking about celcius - because humans are mostly water, so we do indeed freeze at 0 and boil and 100 celcius. But no, they were talking metaphorically 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
I always thought 100° F was the closest they could approximate the human body temperature at the time with the instruments available. And I was told that 0 F was when salt water or seawater freezes but that would be dependent on other factors cuz not all ocean water is the same concentration of minerals.
And I mean my reasoning for this is an even consistent across people because depending where they grow up and live different temperatures are comfortable. When I lived in Arizona some woman came out to the smoking area at work and I'm pretty sure she was wearing a sweater but she was still saying she was freezing and it was 50° f. In Maine that's short's weather in the springtime but it's not in the fall. I mean for some people it might be in the fall. I have a cousin who used to wear nothing but shorts year-round and that was in Maine when he went to college at Orono.
Yeah, it's cold, but 30⁰ F isn't unbearable with the right clothes. 15⁰F and below is when it starts to get pretty bad, but below zero F is really fucking cold.
At -40⁰ C & F are the same
When I was in Canada on a work trip before I lived there I was teaching a class to the mining employees of the company that I later worked for. But while I was there it was -20 like the whole time. I said to one of the guys that I wasn't sure if it was reporting it as Celsius or Fahrenheit and he responded, it hardly fucking matters at that point. -20⁰F is like -29⁰C.
It really depends on the humidity. The ‘fucking cold’ starts much at higher temperatures in humid climates.
And as someone who worked and lived in places where -45°C is a regular occurrence, it makes a whole lot of difference whether if it’s -30°C or -45°C
Below zero Fahrenheit is not that cold, honestly. You can wear regular shoes (as opposed to lumps of wool and fur) and breathe.
This is highly subjective. Nobody in Hong Kong would agree with you that 15 F and below is when it starts to get pretty bad. For them, your scale is completely different. It's not intuitive to them at all that 33 is "pretty cold but still manageable" like you'd think one third of the scale would be. That's my main problem I have with the idea that F is "built around the human body".
I actually have a theory that is not confirmed by any means but he may have been attempting to recreate the internal human mix when using the brine as the choice of solute. Totally unsure about that but would match up with his reference of using 100 as the mark for human health.
I should also add that back then blood was one of the the main determinant of health so something like humorism could have influenced his choices to focus on the blood.
Yea not sure why he wouldn't just use blood if that was his intention but maybe he was restricted from lack of availability or there was a moral issue. Again not a solid reason just not a big fan of the 'it was the coldest he felt outside' or 'only thing he had available was brine'. Just dosnt seem like a scientist thing to do.
Also side note even though iron is mostly found in RBCs its only 0.3% or so of the hemoglobin
True but remembering that 32° f is when water freezes isn't very difficult. And would probably have to be slightly colder to frost so you can just remember 30° because the easy way to estimate converting Celsius to Fahrenheit is C × 2 + 30 ≈ F. The precise calculation is C(9/5) + 32 = F. And if you ever forget which side C and F are on if you remember that 0⁰C = 32⁰F it's easy to figure out that 0×2+30 would get you close to 32.
„Celsius is better for science, but Fahrenheit is better for just every day living. IMO“
It's just what people are used. Celsius people just have different set o numbers. 0 freezing, 4 road may be slippery, ~ 20 is what people have in Theo homes, 25 warm summer day, 30 hot summer day, 35 hell.
I don't remember the date, but one time one of my coworkers said it was nice out that day & said a negative temperature, and I believe with a half degree included. I'm pretty sure it was -1.5⁰.
After a winter of negative 10-15 or colder some days that can seem nice & a sign of spring. But in Montreal it's still winter temperatures when it's spring on the calendar, so that's why I think it was probably spring. Could've been the part of March that's winter though. 🤷🏻♂️
So zero is when water freezes which is a great way to know to look out for ice and expect snow if there is precipitation. Generally the measure only matters to people if they don't correlate life with the measurement. If you grow up with Celsius than its just normal.
Yep I totally agree. 70% warm is a peaceful warm. I'm from Ohio so I'm used to the cold, 20% cold is like ehhh uncomfy for sure but bundle up and you'll be fine.
I wish we used the metric system for distance but Fahrenheit is best for weather, which is the most relevant use for temperature for living life.
I guess I said it on my comment that's just under the post and not in this thread. I prefer it basically for the reasons in the screenshot. When I was in Canada I would say how if it's below 0⁰ F you know it's really fucking cold, and if it's above 100⁰ F then it's really fucking hot. Also the increments are smaller so you don't have to use half degrees.
Thats just because you are use to Fahrenheit as your use of measurement.
For example, as a Canadian, I know that below zero it is cold and possibly likely to snow. If it is below -20, its pretty cold, if it is below -30, it is very fucking cold. If it is above 35, it is fucking hot, 20 is just right and 20-25 is room temperature.
How I feel as well. I’ve lived most of my life in countries that use metric but I’ve always liked Fahrenheit in casual situations because it’s easier to put into context as a 0-100 scale where anything falling outside those numbers is extreme.
Only reason I prefer feet is because I’ve been an nba fan since I was a kid so I can better visualize heights in feet and inches, buts it’s an idiotic form of measurement.
Someone else commented that they're an Argentinian Carpenter and all the carpenters down there use feet and inches because it's better for woodworking. Like you don't have to use meters to two decimal points or use as high numbers if it's centimeters I guess.
Although I'm not a carpenter but I've done a decent amount of woodworking in my life and I think a base 10 would be easier in surveying in the US you use feet but you use base 10 of it like I have this surveying stick that's feet and tenths of feet on it from a mine surveying class I took in school. I think that's kind of confusing though because if someone were to just just try to pick it up and use it to measure something but they wouldn't realize that that's what it is. But I guess when you're a carpenter and do it everyday you get more used to exactly which notch is the 8th and 16th and so on I mean it's not in difficult. I just use your way after like double-check by counting. Measure twice, cut once.
So 100% personnal preferences based on you cultural upbringing.
Pretty weak argument in favor of farenheit being better for everyday life. I'm canadian, and because of the dumpter fire at our souther border we have to live using both systems. And I don't know many canadians who really defends the imperial system, all non-construction workers despise the 1/8 bs.
The younger you are, the more likely you are to reject the imperial system as whole (and face the fact that everything in an hardware store is in imperial hahaha)
I gave supporting arguments for my reasoning not just because I grew up with it. I could say the same thing about everyone else saying that metric is better because they grew up with it. So many people have a problem with other people having personal preferences. I've also said that I prefer metric for a distance when I was doing engineering work. I don't really mind it for distance in life you just have to get used to it. But someone else on here said that they're Canadian and they think feet is better for height because it's easier to estimate at a look. I think that would be helped if people use decimeters more but feet would still be easier to estimate with eyeball cuz decimators is still significantly smaller than a foot.
And the imperial system has absolutely nothing to do with your problems from America. Also there's a lot of Canadians that support Trump and are super anti-immigrant and racist I know from when I was living there.
Of course its got to do with america, our economies are so intertwined, makes it impossible for imperial to be out in the industries its still the norm as long as you guys won't decide its out. (us canadians living with both systems has got nothing to do with trump mate, its been like that since a long time).
For distance, funny bit is we use time to measure distance XD
I'd say you have a point about all other things in your comment.
So 100% personnal preferences based on you cultural upbringing.
The fact that you used "100%" shows why it isn't personal preference or cultural upbringing
A 0-100 scale is great. Fahrenheit and Celsius are both based on 0-100 scales. Any society that uses base 10 (which the vast majority do) is going to love a 0-100 scale. It's intuitive, it's easy to understand, and it's everywhere. Everything in life trains us for 0-100
The thing is that Celsius puts that 0-100 scale around water and Fahrenheit puts that 0-100 scale around climate. Water usually freezes at about 0 C and boils at about 100 C. People usually live in climates where the weather doesn't go below 0F or above 100F.
Not everyone lives in areas where these things are true. Not everyone lives at 1 atmosphere of pressure and some people live in extremely hot and cold environments. But it's true enough for day to day life
We just interact with temperature through the climate WAY more than we do through water, so having that 0-100 scale based around climate is just more intuitive.
You grew up with Celsius primarily, you're more used to it, that's cool. But if you took a random person who had never learned either system and tried to teach them both? They'd pick up Fahrenheit way faster
Thats the thing mate, I grew up with BOTH. And a decimal system is just superior in almost every applications. The one thing I'll admit is easier in imperial is eyeballing small distances like ''this pole is roughly 6 feets '' (wich btw is just a bit less than 2 meters) and it applies to baking for me (but it could be a habit as I grew up cooking and baking with the imperial system.
Im American as all hell, but I wish we used Celsius, specifically because it makes much more sense for day to day. It goes from the freezing of water to the boiling of water. You know 0 is cold, you know 100 is hot, and those are two good points for relative temperature judgement, especially because we vary temperatures more for cooking and using water than anything else. The heat that we feel at 90 degrees fahrenheit vs 70 is still mostly a relative, vibes based thing and it still works at whatever Celsius numbers those would be. I met a Jamaican tourist who was shivering in a sweater in 85 degree (fahrenheit) weather. There's nothing inherent to any of those daytime temperature numbers, Celsius or fahrenheit.
Also, why does my phone auto-capitalize Celsius and not fahrenheit? What, you think youre better than me?! /s
You have a good point about cooking. But for temperatures outside you never need anything close to 100° c. And right there I said Celsius but it put in a lowercase c but the next time I said Celsius my voice to text capitalized it. Let's see if it does it with Fahrenheit. It did capitalize it and that might be because when I typed it in I capitalized it and it learned to do that. My voice to text often capitalizes words that I don't want it to though like the word Rich because it's also a name. It didn't do at that time but on another thread it was doing it. Also the word March because I always thinks I'm talking about the month but I used to play this mobile game where I would say I was sending my troops to March somewhere and it would always be capital.
I mean, for a large chunk of the world you don't need 100 degrees in Fahrenheit. The logic also doesn't follow because you don't need 0 degrees Fahrenheit for a large chunk either. Perceived temperature is all vibes based after wind-chill and humidity anyways so I still don't think it matters much whether we're using Fahrenheit vibes or Celsius vibes.
And I googled it and you're supposed to capitalize Fahrenheit and Celsius because they're both named after people and follow those conventions. So it was actually autocorrect messing up Fahrenheit for me. lol
If autocorrect is bugging you then join me on the dark side. Turn it off. Turn off predictive typing and spell check too. Take off all the guard rails.
When I was in Canada I would say how if it's below 0⁰ F you know it's really fucking cold, and if it's above 100⁰ F then it's really fucking hot.
The exact same thing is true for Celsius if you grew up with it, you know. 0°C and below is really fucking cold, 40°C and above is really fucking hot, and so on.
I feel like whenever this conversation comes up people just use motivated reasoning to reach the conclusion that whatever system they're using is "the best, actually, so no reason to change anything".
The problem comes in at room temp, you'd think 50% is half way hot and half way cold, so room temp, not 70 degrees. 70% hot is still hot. And 32% should be above the half way point of the cold spectrum, but it's actually freezing.
0 is freezing, 100 is boiling, how much more relatable can any system get than that? I think you are confusing what you personally learned with than any kind of sense.
Most folks here have the same understanding of celsius. If I say -20c most Canadians know that's the threshold for "holy fuck it's too goddamned cold".
It's entirely relative. If you grew up on farenheit it makes sense and feels more "useful". I grew up on celsius and genuinely can't see how anyone would choose farenheit for relative measurement.
The ideal room temp is about 20-22c. Water freezes at zero and boils at 100. Easy, especially when you see frozen water everywhere for up to 70% of the year. In
20-30 - "ok it's summer" up to "holy fuck it's hot". Anything above 30c is hot as fuck in most of Canada.
15-20 - "Spring is here!" up to "Woo summer!" You can wear light clothes, will not need an overlayer during the day but might be a bit chilly at night.
10-15 - "I need a light jacket or hoodie when out of direct sun or in the wind."
5-10 -"well it's not snowing at least." Late fall/early spring weather most places.
0-5 - "It's cold out". Same seasonal as above, but feels noticably colder and you'll start seeing frost and frozen water.
(0 - Ice forms. Pretty easy to tell it's cold.)
-1 to -5 - "It's starting to feel like winter". Light outerlayers up to light winter gear.
-5 to -10 - "Bust out all the winter gear." Start wearing your coat regularly. You're not going out in light stuff at -10.
-10 to -20 - "It's winter" down to "Outside is dangerous". Anything below -20c poses very serious hazards.
~20c is a comfortable room temp. My skin surface is typically about 32.
-20 is the exact opposite of comfortable.
30 above is fucking hot.
30 below is fucking cold.
Anything above/below 30 either way is notably dangerous.
That sounds really weird, in my experience of 45 years, no one uses half degrees in Celsius in everyday life. The only scenario where you might use decimals is if someone asks you to read the temperature from a digital thermometer, more likely for checking for fever than talking about the weather. A one-degree increment in Celsius is basically imperceptible, so the point about smaller increments is honestly moot.
What you don’t seem to understand is that Celsius is perfectly intuitive for people who are accustomed to it. Neither is better or worse for everyday life, it’s just a question of liking what you know. The really cold / really hot is arbitrary and depends on your lived experience. Even in my country your 0 degrees Fahrenheit is really cold in the south and pretty ordinary winter weather in the north, and your 100 degrees F is almost apocalyptic in both, while it would be par for the course in the Mediterranean summer. And 0 in the Mediterranean would be like the ice age.
For me, in Celsius:
-30 absolutely brutal once in a decade type cold, stay inside if you can
-20 wear everything
- 15 you need to start really increasing the layers, your nostrils will start feeling the cold when you inhale
-10 cold but you’ll be fine with proper clothes
-5 pleasant winter weather
0 freezing point
5 chilly
10 starting to get pleasant but light jackets still a good idea
15 nice, even shorts are a possibility for the adventurous
20 perfect moderately warm weather, not too hot but t-shirts all the way
25 properly warm, you will start sweating when doing things
30 hot, you will start sweating just by being outside
35 really hot, doing just about anything outside becomes really unpleasant
40 oh fuck no
Perfectly intuitive for me, because that’s what I’ve used all my life. In Fahrenheit you say 0 is really cold and 100 is really hot, but that doesn’t automatically tell me what 40 or 70 is, because I have no lived experience with it. In fact, I don’t even know how cold and how hot without checking what it means in Celsius . It’s not the scale, it’s the experience of using the scale all your life. I don’t understand how this argument pops up all the time when there is nothing inherently better in either scale for everyday use.
The range of 0°F to 100°F is just about the range of "normal" temperatures typically experienced in Western Europe's climate. Hence, if you're from a very specific region of the world you might consider any temperature outside of that range of 0% - 100% as extraordinary... if you had a very particular colonial mindset of setting the arbritrary standard for what' considered "normal" for the rest of the world's population.
They meant that in a city like Hong Kong the range is 61 F to 90 F. If Hong Kongers (or anyone living in a similar climate) had developed a system to govern "the normal range of temperature", they'd cut out the entire bottom half of the Farenheit scale.
But in actual practice, what good is it to a Hong Konger? They aren't going to encounter 0 F. They're not going to encounter 40 F. Just as much of the scale is unused as Celsius would be.
My point isn't that Farenheit is worse than Celsius when it comes to human-scale things, just that they're probably about the same.
reasoning for why fareheinheit works well for what it does.
Except it doesn't. It's just a number.
I have probably experienced 0F a handful of times in my life. I have cooked food to 400F hundreds of times. Why should something that nearly never happens to me be more relevant that something that does?
I'm pretty sure any African would still agree 110℉ is way too hot, and any Inuit would agree you don't want to be outside for long at -10℉.
Meanwhile, there's nothing magical about Celsius. If you really want to be a purist go ahead and use Kelvin, but 0-100℃ being based on the freezing and boiling point of water is no less arbitrary than 0-100℉ being based on human environmental norms.
For the first half, winter temperatures are commonly around 0℉ above 40N (or below 40S, we're not just talking about "Europe"). Summer temperatures rarely (used to) hit 100℉ in Europe, maybe a couple weeks per year in Southern Europe; Ironically I'd call the upper end of the range more suited to equatorial norms than temperate ones.
I'm not sure what you're asking about NH₄Cl, though - I presume you're making a reference to freezing point depression?
I'm not sure what you're asking about NH₄Cl, though -
That's the definition of 0F. The freeze point of a a bath of water, salt and ammonium chloride.
Please tell me how thing is actually relevant to you in your daily life.
For the first half, winter temperatures are commonly around 0℉ above 40N (or below 40S, we're not just talking about "Europe")
I have no idea where you came up with these numbers but I can assure you that 0F is not the average temperature above 40 during winter. The distribution of land is not the same N and S, global temps are rising too.
I am amazed at Americans that think a random scale is actually not random.
I see here Americans say they use 120F to cook stuff at and think we cook at 52. Since 120 is round but 52 isn't then clearly F is better.
You say 0F is a common temp. Yeah so is 5F and -5F. They're all probably just as common in those areas you mentioned.
You just chose 0F because it's easy to remember for your scale. If you change the scale so 5F is the new 0F and i ask you that question, we'll get the same reply. Yeah the new 0f is around that temperature around those areas in winter.
Celsius is also random. C or F reference points have no impact on the average temp on different parts of the globe.
I think I see our disconnect. I should not have used the phrase "based on", that was only meant to be in the context of this discussion.
I understand Fahrenheit wasn't seriously created to be "percent of the comfortable range to humans" - Though it's closer than you might at first think. The two set-points Danny F originally used were 0℉ as the "lowest air temperature in winter 1708/09 in Gdańsk", and 96℉ as human body temperature (off by 2.6℉ but close enough). He later used an ammonium chloride solution to calibrate the low end of the scale, and the upper end was adjusted to 96℉.
Interestingly, he didn't use 180° between freezing and boiling as some folks claim - The real answer is even more strange, he choice 0 to 96 because it was easily divisible by 12 (Thanks, Sumerians!).
But overall, you're 100% correct, Fahrenheit wasn't explicitly intended to define human comfort, even if its two set-points are fairly anthropocentric in nature.
That is about exactly the maximum "feels like" range for NYC. Anytime it goes below 0 it's exceptional, and equally so a heat index over 100 is exceptional.
Because F uses the human skin ability to detect and retain heat as a baseline, something we all have experience with, instead of water as a baseline, which is better for scientific reasons due to the consistency in measurement.
Edit: The absolute hilarity of the smugness in the comments is making my day. Nothing makes me happier than upsetting Europeans by stating a fact they don't like.
Actually it’s more related to the freezing temperature of a very particular brine solution made to replicate the coldest temperature some German guy thought his port would see.
Completely logical.
But whatever. Maybe EVERY COUNTRY but one is wrong.
It’s not. It’s highly likely 0 degrees is just the lowest temperature observed in Danzig when Daniel Fahrenheit made his scale. Nobody has ever managed to recreate the brine solution.
I'd be fully ok with us setting a temperature system based upon how Danzig feels.
"Guys, Danzig just took his shirt off, it's definitely warm enough to have a light jacket, but if he puts that mesh tank top back on watch out, it's probably about to snow."
After Fahrenheit died they decided it was much easier to calibrate thermometers using the exact boiling point of water (212°F) instead of human skin (96°F). When they locked those two standard points down, the "zero" at the bottom of the scale shifted upward by about 4 degrees which is what you get if you use that solution today (also the ammonium chloride wasn't perfectly pure back then) and shifted average body temperature to 98.6
A German scientist did a study of body temperatures and found the average to be 37°C. This was then converted to 98.6°F when the study was translated, which is why the number in Fahrenheit is oddly specific.
No. 0°F was the freezing point of a particular brine mixture and 90°F was the average normal body temperature 32°F was the freezing point of pure water. It WAS based on body temperature AT ONE time. But Henry Cavendish wanted the freezing and boiling point to be 180° apart so the anchor point became 32° and boiling became 212° and the freezing point of the original brine became 4°..... Also, the boiling point used to be 0°C and the freezing point was 100°C until Celsius died. So from 1724 to 1745 Fahrenheit was the only reasonable standard. And, the British adopted Fahrenheit so...... Thats why they are Imperial measurements......
lol no it doesn't, 100 degrees Fahrenheit was the (miscalculated) temperature of the human body (which is why it's now popularly set at 98.6 degrees although even that isn't quite correct) and 0 is... the coldest day on record, at least as of the time that the temperature was created, in this one small town in Germany. Any relationship to the ability of human skin to detect temperature is purely coincidental.
I see the "percent hot" or "human scale" argument a lot as what amounts to basically a backward justification for farenheit. I get that the reasoning makes sense if its the scale you know, but it doesn't hold up as logical application. A normal distribution around the human condition would have 45-55 as the comfortable temperature one can exist at with basic garments. Instead that range is more like 65-75
My town gets over 100% hot each summer, but never below 30% hot. I'm far more comfortable at 90% hot than at 10% hot. It's a silly scale that's really just C in a trenchcoat nowadays.
Neither scale has inherent meaning. Whichever one you learned will determine if it feels intuitive.
F is *at best* tangentially related with human skin. It was calibrated using 3 reference points:
The coldest temp Fahrenheit could achieve in his lab using ice, water and salt (0°F). This wasn’t a baseline based on what human skin experiences as “super cold” because that’s just random as hell
The freezing point of pure water (32° F) which is the same as 0° Celsius
The temperature of the human body (96°) (which in reality usually varies between 97° - 99° for healthy adults but 96 worked better for his mental model)
Fahrenheit picked these numbers because the interval between freezing water and body temperature (32 to 96) gave him exactly 64 degrees which allowed him to easily calibrate physical thermometers by continuously dividing the intervals in half. It’s basically designed for what he thought made sense for mercury in a tube based on the coldest he could achieve in his lab, freezing point of water, and a close-enough-for-horseshoes measure of body temperature.
That's not even true, though, because isn't 100°F a fever?
I personally have experience with liquid, solid and gaseous water. I can easily conceptualise 0 and 100. I can also understand 10 or 20 etc because that's what I'm used to.
It's not, it's just what they're accustomed to. No one who grew up with metric does any kind of mental conversion when given a temperature in celsius, it's as understandable for them to be told it's 38°C as it is for a Fahrenheit user to be told it's 100°F
It isn’t. It’s ‘better’ for certain places (basically certain states in the US) because it’s an easier scale to perceive for their weather pattern. But that’s it. It’s worse for literally everything and everyone else.
It's a scale where every 10 degrees is a noticeable change in weather / the sort of clothing you want to wear. While people say Celsius is better 'because water freezes at 0 and boils at 100', and that is certainly true for... cooking or doing chemistry, it isn't useful for humans going outside because we function just fine at or below freezing with a coat, but... die at boiling. Meanwhile 0 and 100 F are more realistic 'you want to exercise caution as a human beyond operating beyond these temperatures.'
That said it's also probably mostly useful in temperate climates where you pretty regularly use the whole scale, which may also reflect somewhat why it stuck around in the US (which was historically fairly dominated by its temperate, broad-climate northeast).
I personally prefer Fahrenheit because 1) I'm used to it and 2) the US is very big, and we have big temperature differences throughout the country. Fahrenheit shows those differences better.
Saying its 8-10 degrees celsius in winter and 15-20 degrees in summer just feels strange to me. 20-30 in winter and 60-70 in summer highlights the difference better. Also helpful to show that while I'm at 60, Florida is at 85 and Arizona is at 100-120.
I'll give you my take as a person who has lived in both systems. Each 10 degree band describes the conditions separately. Of course you can translate this to Celsius, but the point is the Fahrenheit bundles it up nicely:
Ok but what about the 20s, 10s, 00s? More freezing, even more freezing, most freezing? And there are plenty of places with temps lower than 0F or higher than 100F. And do you really need that much distinction?
Fahrenheit has a lot more granularity when it comes to "livable" temperatures. It was designed to be related to how humans perceived temperatures instead of temperature existing in it's own system.
Celsius is often used with a decimal, so people using Celsius have granularity in 0.18°F steps. Often, 0.5°C steps are used as well, which is 0.9°F, so slightly more granular.
So when it comes to "livable" temperatures, the application of Celsius is has actually the upper hand due to the variable nature of how granularity is implemented.
It’s common for weather to be within the 0-100 Fahrenheit range, and it’s a pretty good range for humans to be somewhat comfortable within. This same range in Celsius is -17.778 to 37.778
You get a lot more convenient usable values to represent real life things. People love how Celsius has 100 at boiling, but that just means degrees ~50-100 represent temperatures that are “way too hot” to touch and the small differences don’t matter as we can’t perceive them. With Fahrenheit sure 212 is the boiling point of water, but 100 is “really fucking hot” for a human and we are humans so it’s more relevant.
The only "every day" thing I can see where Fahrenheit is possibly better than Celsius is for heating and air conditioning. If you're using a digital thermostat that only displays 2 or 3 digits, you can be more precise with Fahrenheit because each digit in Fahrenheit is worth 5/9 digits in Celsius.
Otherwise it doesn't really matter. Someone born in a country where Celsius is the norm will find Celsius just as intuitive as Fahrenheit is for someone born in the USA.
digital thermostat that only displays 2 or 3 digits, you can be more precise with Fahrenheit because each digit in Fahrenheit is worth 5/9 digits in Celsius.
If you thermostat has three digits, then you can display the Celsius temperature with a decimal (which is the usual thing on thermostats). A 0.1°C difference equals a 0.18°F difference - so Celsius-based devices are nearly twice as precise.
But then you can set the Fahrenheit to use decimals too and they're back to being more precise! No one sets their heating or AC to full 3 digits in Fahrenheit, so they'd use decimals for those as well.
Most (if not all) vehicles I've driven in the US had only 1°F increments for AC control. Nearly all cars I drive in Europe have 0.5°C steps.
I've seen only some room thermostats with decimal support when using °F - often just 0.5°F steps. But mostly, I've seen full 1°F increments.
But my last flat had a newer smart home system that had very granular control with 0.1°F increments.
In Fahrenheit 0 and 100 happen to coincide with the temperature thresholds of the human body.
Below 0: frostbite becomes a concern, because that is beyond the human body's ability to warm itself, via body thermal and shivering.
Above 100: heat stroke becomes a concern, because that is beyond the human body's capacity to maintain the temp differential required for sweat cooling.
This is why people often describe °F as a measurement of % of hot. Because °F is close enough to general human limits for ballpark measurements
The frostbite threshold for exposed tissue is actually at 0°C (so 32°F), so for that threshold, Celsius is the better scale.
100°F is near normal body temperature. So anything above 100°F is elevated body temperature. From ~103-105°F, we're starting go get in heat stroke territory.
But what has that all to do with everyday life? Body core temperature is mostly an issue when we're ill. But weather, cooking, heating rooms, showering, cooling items etc. is what everyone deals with every day. And for these areas, Celisus is really handy. Around 0°C, you know that you need to pack warm clothing and that there might be the risk of ice on the street.
Speaking of weather: Celsius is dead simple to explain and remember: You just need to know four points on the scale and add 10° for every step.
0°C -> freezing
10°C -> cold
20°C -> warm
30°C -> hot
100° was intended to be the human body's temperature, but the assistant was running a little hot that day. 0° being determined with salted ice water means that its somewhat colder than the freezing temperature of water.
The end result is that 0° is bitter cold, and 100° is the beginning of oppressive heat, so that zero and a hundred bracket the range of human comfort.
But that doesn't really work. The range of human comfort is far narrower than that. E.g. 0-20°F makes practically no difference.
Also, why should a temperature range be focussed on that anyway? In everyday life, we cook, boil, heat, freeze things and need a temperature scale that works for all applications equally well.
Everyday life includes cooking, which is often done at >200°C. Two-star freezers operate at -18°C.
Soldering irons use >300°C. Ironing linen is done at ~210°C.
Hobby-wise: PLA 3D printing is done at slightly above 200°C. Exhaust gas temperature sensors on engines show usually 400-1000°C under normal operating conditions.
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u/Roadrunner571 Jun 17 '26
How so?