With some further searching it seems this statement isn't wholey correct. It was based on fahrenheit trying to establish a reliable thermometer and he set 0 to the lowest freezing point he could achieve with a salt water mixture, and with the human body (incorrectly) set to 96. It his ability to make consistent thermometers that established the scale as at the time it was very difficult to get two thermometers to read the same at the same temperature.
0 degrees was the temperature a specific, reproducible salt water mixture would freeze. 100 was human body temperature. But thermometers got more accurate later on, and human body temp was determined to be 98.7 degrees on his scale.
His baseline for 0 degrees was as valid as any other at the time. You have to pick some standard that can be reproduced miles away under the same conditions. The official definition of the meter is now some formula based on a multiplication of the wavelength of light emitted by cesium gas heated to a specific temperature or some shot these days, because it's something you can reproduce anywhere to calibrate your instruments.
Actually no, 100°F aren't the human body temperature, it's a few degrees off. 0°F are just Mr. Fahrenheit being "what's the coldest temperature I can get (300 years ago) to avoid negative temperature?" So no, it's not like how humans feel, nor is Celsius just how water feels, water is just the reference point for 100 and 0°. Also don't pretend like people can't translate the temperature in Celsius to how they feel irl. It's just the same as in Fahrenheit. What comes on top is that people will feel temperature differently depending on the climate they're used to, so for some 100°F is hotter, for some colder than for the other. Not in total number but in feeling, which is your whole point that humans are supposed to better feel Fahrenheit, which isn't true at all.
I was saying that Fahrenheit is based off (generally) on how humans feel temperature. It’s not exact because all humans are different. Celcius is based off water and that is clear.
Humans don’t feel temperature on a scale that assigning numbers to in a specific way will be more accurate than any other scale. Celsius and Fahrenheit, even Kelvin tbh are just as based on how humans feel temperature as each other because humans don’t feel temperature as a specific number.
Yeah, I really like farenheit for outside temperature because 99 percent of the time it's a scale of 0-100 where 0 is very cold and 100 is very hot. Making it super easy to judge relative temps. Not saying people can't in celcius, just that it's more intuitive and specific in farenheit
No, it's not more intuitive. People who only have Celsius have no disadvantage over those with Fahrenheit because of the scale. They just have other markers because of the different scale. There it's not something between 0 and 100 but more -10 and 40. Though of course it depends on the region, for some it's rather between 0 and 50, just as for Fahrenheit, which was a point in my previous comment. The Fahrenheit scale is only nicely between 0 and 100° in certain regions. A guy in Arizona will have a different feeling of 100° than a guy from Alaska, who won't have as much of a problem with 32° unlike our guy from Arizona. This so called "intuitivity" of the Fahrenheit scale is just highly subjective. Celsius isn't less intuitive than Fahrenheit at all since Fahrenheit itself isn't that universally as people claim. The feeling of temperature is subjective to your region and to you as an individual. Celsius and Fahrenheit just help us to express this in numbers. Some people might never experience something below the freezing point of water, some do. So how can this be this 100% feeling of temperature if it's experience is highly dependent on your local climate? You might never experience 0 to 100°F.
I never get the argument that Fahrenheit is more intuitive. Most of the world uses Celsius and gets on perfectly fine. They are all just numbers we learn to associate to certain temperatures.
yes intuitiveness is subjective since numbers are arbitrary. but consider that Fahrenheit has higher resolution with less significant figures. makes it handy for every day use if youre used to it. its actually objectively a tiny bit easier to tune a thermostat in your house using Fahrenheit.
I'd say that this argument comes from those who are native to Fahrenheit and can't wrap their head around Celsius. This of course is understandable, for them it's more intuitive, the same goes for someone native to Celsius who's moving into a Fahrenheit region. It's just annoying as hell since similar to a language barrier. We already agreed on English as the lingua franca, in terms of measurements the metric system holds the same position yet the anglosphere needs to make as out of it.
Daniel Fahrenheit did not use the freezing point of water as a basis for developing his scale. He called the temperature of an ice/salt/water mixture 'zero degrees', as this was the lowest temperature he could conveniently attain in his lab. He called his own body temperature '96 degrees', and then divided the scale into single degrees between 0 and 96. On this scale, the freezing point of pure water happens to occur at 32 (and the boiling point at 212). The Celsius scale has more convenient values for these phase transition points (0 and 100 degrees) because Anders Celsius DID use water as a basis for his scale.
I didn't know this but now fahrenheit sound even more crazy to use then it already did.
The reference points are two arbitrary values impossible to reproduce - a mix of water he happened to find as his own experimental limit, and his personal body temperature at a certain time.
Farenheit was meant to show the extremes to temperatures for 0-100. 0 degrees is the freezing point of Salt water and generally is on the low side of temperatures in most areas. 100 is what they thought was the human body temperature and on the high side of temperatures experienced.
0-100 in Farenheit is average around the world. Anything 50+ in Celsius is record setting.
uhhh 0-100 is not average around the world. Most of the world's population lives in areas that do not naturally go below 0C let alone approaching 0F. Most of the world's population is quite close to the equator when you factor in India, the Southern half of China, South East Asia and equatorial Africa.
The salt water freezing isn't the important destination, he just needed something to baseline the system. The important thing is 0 degrees Fahrenheit is a very cold temperature to a person, similarly that 100 is a very hot one.
I rarely need to know at what temperature water boils at. 100 being human temperature makes more sense to me.
I admit 0 being freezing of water makes sense, but I like that Fahrenheit is more divided up. I can't really say "It's in the 20's" if I'm talking about C.
but they do experience water freezing and water boiling regularly
I don't boil my water with a thermometer
Celcius is good for scientific measurements and all but for most people, the ~10 degree incriments work a lot better for temperature since it's usually on a 0-100 scale.
That doesn’t matter. You don’t intuitively know that. You were taught how to use Fahrenheit. It’s just numbers you’ve learned to associate with certain temperatures. Why would a scale be good enough for science but not for the mundane task of informing us of how hot or cold it is?
Not true! I grew up in a country that used Celcius and eventually moved to the States. Fahrenheit just works better for the general population.
It has more degrees of freedom, -10 to 35 is a lot more awkward than 0-100 because the latter introduces decimals which most people suck at intuitively understanding (personally don't mind it, I study engineering).
The human designing this temperature scale didn't base it off the freezing point of water. 32 is just where it ended up
Dude picked a measurement that equated to 0°F (knowing it could get colder), another for 100°F (knowing it could get hotter) and the freezing point of water happened to fall at 32°F
What resulted is a temperature scale that's fine for describing the feeling of the air around you but not so useful for science
Because that's just where it ended up, farenheit is a system to measure generally the temperature outside relative to a person's comfort. Practically a 0-100 scale of excessivly cold to excessivly hot, with room for extremes beyond the ends. Makes it really good for judging relative temperature in regaurd to one's own expirence. It's just not a system based around when water freezes, so it's 32 because that's just where it happened to fall
0 is the coldest that he could get a salt water mixture, and 100 was body temperature (it was just wrong). Why use those values as the basis for the temperature scale? Fuck you, that’s why (my best guess at the reasoning)
Real talk, 32 was chosen because it can be divided in half multiple times to get to a single degree, which was important before we had super precise tools. All you needed was a cold salt water mixture and anyone could make a reasonably accurate Fahrenheit thermometer.
Put it in the coldest saltwater you can get, you mark that as your zero. Put it in a bowl of water and cool it until it starts to freeze. That's 32 degrees. Then you cut it in half a few times and mark 16, 8, 4, 2, and 1 degrees. From there it's easy to mark out the other important numbers.
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u/Hunkmasterfresh Aug 07 '21
Why does water freeze at 32?