this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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Celsius tried to fit too much into 100 notches to please big math.
F is more nuanced with more notches, but the ends aren't logical. It coukd be shifted perhaps, but how?
If freezing was moved to 0, then water boiling would be 180
Perhaps C could have had a 200 degree range, then it would be closer to F and not so hard to convert.
But also: Scientists are important and we shouldn't make it too easy, it demeans their work. Maybe make the C scale show water boiling at 183.4521 degrees so scientific calculations are more impressive-looking and respectable.
"Please change the entire world's system to make it easier for the one country that uses a different one"
It wouldn't even change the difficulty, really. You'd just wind up multiplying or dividing by 9/10 instead of 9/5.
https://xkcd.com/927/
America moving zero to Celcius' zero would be better, it would remove one whole step from the calculation
Then if they made their degrees about 9 fifths the size (they could get higher resolution than they'd lose by doing what we do and quoting temperature to one decimal place where needed) it would be dead simple to convert (just change the symbol from °F to °C!)
Celsius is literally just Kelvin but shifted... So it's just as friendly for "universal math".
K is just shifted °C though and just removes what's nice about it with freezing/boiling of watee while requiring 3 digit numbers for every temperature you'd encounter in daily life. I think I'd rather use Fahrenheit
The SI unit scales are chosen to fit together to avoid "respectable" scientific calculations.
To heat one milliliter (1 ml) of water one degree Celsius (1 °C) you need one calorie (1 cal) of energy.
Also the dimensions of one milliliter, is one cubic centimeter (1 cm^3), and that amount of water weighs 1 gram (1 g).
Thus 1 liter of water needs 1 kcal of energy to heat up 1 °C.
I'm aware, taught that in school.
Also aware of the real world, those things don't mesh the same at altitude.
In theory, reality and theory are the same. In reality, they're not.
I love science when it's not treated like a religion.
It's not limited to 100 steps. The decimal system gives you infinite granularity.
So few countries use Fahrenheit that this shouldn't even be a consideration