• C126@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    So why not make the temperature go to the hottest? Let me guess, 0 isn’t the coldest either in America, right? It’s just so arbitrary, and pure cope to say it’s the best way to describe temperature.

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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      1 year ago

      It’s just so arbitrary

      All of them are. The decision to use water at all is completely arbitrary. Even Kelvin and Rankine are completely arbitrary: the “width” of the degrees is not defined by a physical factor, but relative to an entirely arbitrary concept.

      • psud@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        We live on a water planet. The weather we care about is water.

        If you look at the overnight low you probably want to know if frost was likely. Guess what Celcius temperature frost happens at.

        • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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          1 year ago

          That factoid makes celsius relevant for about 4 out of the 12 months, and humans lack the capacity to distinguish between 60-100 on the Celsius scale. Anything at those temperatures just feels like blisters.

          • psud@aussie.zone
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            1 year ago

            The high end of 0 to 100 is nice for boiling, when I’m making beer at the boiling stage the number on the scale goes from somewhere below 25 to 100 and so the end point is obvious

            We boil water quite a lot, though we often aren’t tracking the temperature

            Most of the time the temperature scale that’s best is the one you know. I don’t know of any case where Fahrenheit is objectively best (like Celcius is when water is involved) but I think the best argument for Celcius is it is used in science, so American scientists start a step behind all the others by having to learn a new system. Given neither have any great advantage I reckon it’s worth America changing to make things better for American scientists