For whatever reason, I don't comprehend Celsius intuitively. I convert that to Fahrenheit and see 80.6 degrees. Is Spain dry? Or humid? I would revolt as I much prefer cold.
Probably because you didn't grow up with Celcius. Celcius makes sense because it's based on water, 0 is freezing and 100 is boiling. What's Fahrenheit based on? Anything we use in our daily lives?
Yes, it’s incredibly useful for outdoor temperature. 0 F means it’s very cold, 100 F means it’s very hot. Meanwhile, 0 C means it’s sort of a little cold, and 100 C means your eyes will melt.
I grew up with and actively use Celsius, but this instinctive disdain for other measurement systems leaves me… a little cold. It’s not even like Fahrenheit has weird non-decimal ratios. Save your mocking for the avoirdupois furlongs!
What's your standard of too hot? Uncomfortably hot? From the climate I'm used to then 80F qualifies. I'm not sure 80F is any less arbitrary a threshold than 25C. Don't confuse "my personal range of comfortable temperatures goes from 0-100F" with "0-100F maps neatly to every person's preferred temperature range and therefore is an advantage to fahrenheit"
(and that's before we get into the effects of humidity, or if outdoors, windspeed, on perception of temperature)
Similarly, 0F is -18C. -18C in my country would be a minor disaster, given our historical low is -5C. Our usual yearly low is about 0C, and 0C is more logical here than 32F, with negative temperatures actually being exceptional
I’m honestly unsure how personal preference enters into it. For the vast majority of the planet, within an acceptable margin of error, 0 - 100 F will be a useful temperature range for almost all naturally occurring outside temperatures.
As for personal preference, I think the first two thirds of that range are unbearable. I grew up in an subtropical area that regularly rises over 100 F in the summer. I don’t go around pretending that’s not hot though. It’s very hot! Unless you’re proposing different temperature scales for every climate, I’m unsure how your point about your local area is relevant. Surely people travel outside of your (and my) warm climate.
As I said, I grew up with and actively use Celsius, so I’m unsure why you’re explaining it in a reply to me. I’m also Australian, so your ranges are wildly off for my climate. Summers don’t get started until the 30 C days, and less than 20 C is the heart of winter.
Celsius has many strengths, and is obviously better suited for scientific purposes. Fahrenheit is handy for outdoor temperatures. That doesn’t mean Celsius is useless for those.
These turf wars are weird. A good engineer doesn’t spur different tools, for different tools have different strengths. I can immediately make sense of both systems, and I consider that to my advantage.
It's literally no better for 'outdoor temperatures' in any way. Both F and C systems are effectively arbitrary. It's just about personal preference/what you grew up with.
> and is obviously better suited for scientific purposes
Celsius and Fahrenheit are equally arbitrary / bad for scientific purposes, Kelvin is the only scale that makes sense since it's zeroed at absolute zero. Celsius is only marginally better than Fahrenheit in that you mostly deal with temperature increments rather than absolute values and celsius increments are the same as kelvin increments
Celsius and Kelvin are the same scale with just different starting points for 0. So I wouldn't say it's on the same league as Fahrenheit for scientific purposes, you just need to sum/subtract -273.15 to convert. F to C or K is a much more cumbersome conversion comparatively.
As someone from a tropical country, 0C is not a little cold and 100F is a normal day. As a universal unit, Celcius makes more sense because it can be defined easily.
As usual there is a relevant XKCD even if I can't find it now.
In Fahrenheit 0 and 100 are defined in random ways, but it ends up covering most of the range of temperature human experience in the environment.
Celsius's definition does not include putting a thermometer inside an adult horse, but the common range of everyday temperatures is -18 to 50.
There are points of view in which imperial units can claim to be easier to use.
In the end the SI are technically better for sure; US imperial units are defined in terms of SI units, according to Wikipedia the pound is "legally defined as exactly 0.45359237 kilograms", nor it is a coincidence that -40F° = -40C°
I think it might be because Fahrenheit is the one unit in the US customary system which is not particularly arbitrary compared to the metric equivalent and it actually has some advantages in day to day use since it maps pretty well to human temperatures
It probably has an element of catharsis for people on the receiving end of "metric is superior" whining to point out celsius is not particularly rational
> element of catharsis for people on the receiving end of "metric is superior"
Yes, I get that, but that's what it will always remain — just a cope, but not much else.
The reason: Customary isn't criticized, as far as I can tell, based on how the individual units are defined. That wouldn't be really valid, because all base units are arbitrary, including those of SI.
No, the unit system is criticized as a whole. The way conversions are defined between each other, that's what makes them so much less practical. The fact that a foot isn't 10 inches, a mile isn't 1000 nor 10000 feet (hell, even 5000 would've been better). That 1 gallon of water doesn't weigh 1 pound.
In "daily life", both Celsius and Fahrenheit are mostly isolated scales – you don't relate them to other units very often, and you almost never have to convert them to anything else. So it doesn't really matter how they are defined — definitely not on the same level as length, mass or volume.
I live in an area of Europe that used SI units, but did use customary units before. I think that part is conveniently forgotten in discussions, it’s not like America is exceptional in having some heritage units. Other parts of the world just managed to migrate.
Anyway what I say going to say is there was a migration Path here which went along the lines of changing from a base-12 conversion to a base-10 conversion. So there suddenly was a customary unit and a transitional unit. After that metric base units were introduced
The reason is simply familiarity. If you had lived your whole life with an inverted, nonlinear temperature scale that has freezing water at 53 degree, body temperature at 20 and boiling water at 0 degree you would also find that intuitive.
Both. Spain is one of the European countries with most diverse ecosystems. The local weather ranges from "tropical Mexico" to "Siberian winter". We have deserts and relic cloud rainforests. The inner core is dry and hot (not much unlike US pairies), the North is like Ireland and the West would be similar to California. Canary Islands are subtropical.
Currently most big cities are reaching over the 104ºF (40ºC). A pretty hot year. Environmental crimes made it much worse, so we are having a dry year also.
(Stupid note for myself: It seems that all the years with big wars are extra hot. Somebody should study how all this extra energy released locally by bombs and missiles interact with the weather models).
27 is a comfortable indoor temperature for me (if I wear a T-shirt and don’t do heavy physical work). I wonder where a big difference in preferred temperature comes from, given that body temperature is almost the same for all healthy people?
You better understand Celsius when you use body thermometer. Normal body temperature is 37, 38 is a light fever, 40 is severe fever.
So 27 is temperature of a pleasant summer day, not too hot not too cold.
Sorry, I should have clarified I meant when it's hot, which I think was what OP meant in the context of AC.
When I meant dry, is that when it's hot (like the 35+°C), it's dry, not that it's never humid. Entire days with 30+ and 100% humidity pretty much never happens in Europe.
For instance, Bilbao is quite humid right now (about 80%), but max temps are in the 25°C.
Madrid is expected to reach 39°C today, but humidity is about 30%.
Celsius was based on scientific ideas and works great for describing scientific processes. Fahrenheit was based on everyday weather experience and works great for describing that. They're of course equivalent, and it would be better if the world could agree on one standard (not just for temp, cough cough, metric system).
