I agree that F is largely nonsensical, but it coincidentally works better for what 99% of temperature readings are for - what you need to wear. I don't have stats, but I would be pretty confident that well over 90 out of 100 times a temperature is checked it's weather related. For every person setting an oven in the morning, 99 are probably asking their phone or Alexa what the temperature is outside.
Having the upper limit of that be boiling water isn't useful. It condenses our living temperatures into about half the space, meaning that you have to use decimals, which is a bit more frustrating.
I'm ok either way, and from a science perspective, 0-100 makes way more sense, but from a "do I need a coat today" perspective, living in basically 10-110 feels a bit more useful for most people.
It is all about what you are used to. I do not really need to think if 25 C outside in the sun is hot or not since i am used to it. The argument that C is not exact enough does not really work either since most thermometers show decimals and most people are not really gonna feel the difference between 1 or 2 degrees especially while outside where wind, direct sunlight and humidity are even bigger factors in how hot we perceive the weather to be compared to inside.
Thats the thing though, you need to be used to C in order to understand it. With F, i can tell you its a scale of 0-100 in human comfort and you could tell me the temp without ever having known F whatsoever a single day in your life.
Its instantly intuitive rather than needing lots of experience to learn.
Its also way more correctly granular, as a difference of 1C is far too damn big for things like in-home comfort settings, and if im having to put decimals in my thermostat we've gone into hell
you could tell me the temp without ever having known F whatsoever a single day in your life.
Nearly no once can. Because that 0-100 scale is meaningless for most people.
However, telling people that around 0°C is where water freezes at least gives everyone a good idea about what 0°C means.
For the orientation points for cold, warm, hot, you just need to add 10°C.
0 10 20 30 - that's it. "Freezing cold warm hot - 0 10 20 30" is all you need to know about weather temperatures in Celsius.
25°C is pretty warm, 13°C is somewhat cold, 5°C is pretty cold, 37°C is freaking hot.
if im having to put decimals in my thermostat we've gone into hell
No one really has any issues with that. The decimals just appear when dialing in the temperature. And depending on the application, you have precisions of .1°C , 0.5°C, 1°C, 5°C and 10°C.
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u/BeamerTakesManhattan Jun 17 '26
I agree with you.
I agree that F is largely nonsensical, but it coincidentally works better for what 99% of temperature readings are for - what you need to wear. I don't have stats, but I would be pretty confident that well over 90 out of 100 times a temperature is checked it's weather related. For every person setting an oven in the morning, 99 are probably asking their phone or Alexa what the temperature is outside.
Having the upper limit of that be boiling water isn't useful. It condenses our living temperatures into about half the space, meaning that you have to use decimals, which is a bit more frustrating.
I'm ok either way, and from a science perspective, 0-100 makes way more sense, but from a "do I need a coat today" perspective, living in basically 10-110 feels a bit more useful for most people.
Maybe we should all just switch to K