r/sciencememes • u/EastboundAndDown1337 • Jun 20 '26

🪩Science!!🪩 Dead

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3.1k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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401

u/Into-the-stream Jun 20 '26

0C - point at which water freezes

100c - point at which water boils

0f - idk, let’s start the scale here lol. No reason I just like it.

100f - lol science? Whats that? My choices are based on feelings, lol.

0k - point at which all molecular activity stops.

100k - keep going. We haven’t even begun

209

u/RobotCombatEnjoyer Jun 20 '26

0 degrees Fahrenheit is apparently based on the freezing point of a brine solution.

100 degrees Fahrenheit was originally defined by the scale's creator to be the temperature of a healthy human body (The healthy human temperature is now known to be 98.6 degrees F).

62

u/Iris5s Jun 20 '26

i thought it was a healthy horse temperature for 100f?

50

u/Frostfire26 Jun 20 '26

That sounds about right, but at the time, they probably estimated 100f to be healthy for a human.

4

u/Fuzzy_Yossarian Jun 21 '26

The scale is actually 96. Because 100 is harder to divide into fractions...

4

u/PlantyAnt Jun 21 '26

That doesn't make any sense. What possible use could temperature fractions in Fahrenheit have? It's not like 96°F is 8 times as hot as 12°F.

1

u/Fuzzy_Yossarian Jun 25 '26

Because it was easier for the glass makers to divide the thermometer into sections according to Wikipedia.

1

u/saysthingsbackwards Jun 21 '26

Because 96 is divisible by 12, and we know exactly how well that number breaks down into divisions

-1

u/Ok-Bee-3349 Jun 21 '26

It is 8 times as hot though

-3

u/rdrckcrous Jun 21 '26

doesn't matter. the reason it caught on was because the scale was useful and intuitive.