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by eddyg 149 days ago
Fahrenheit forever!

    0°C.................100°C
    Cold                 Dead

    0°F.................100°F
    Really Cold    Really Hot
3 comments

I see this argument repeated every single time someone tries to defend Fahrenheit.

if "room temperature" was smack in the middle, at 50 degF, you might have a point.

but no, it's pure post-hoc rationalization.

being naked at 0 degF will kill you. being naked at 100 degF will (usually) not. they're not remotely equivalent.

instead, think of it this way - human beings are mostly water, and 0 to 100 degC is "percentage of the way from water's freezing point to boiling point".

room temperature is "about 20% of the way to boiling". 40% or higher starts to cause our bodies to overheat. a typical sauna will be somewhere between 50 and 70% of the way.

0C = Frozen!
Only if you're made of pure water at standard pressure. Which I'm not.
Close enough for government work, actually. And it's not just flesh. Lots of things behave approximately like water, which is handy for all sorts of back-of-envelope estimates.
You better take precautions against frostbite below that temperature though. And a lot of things need to be watched as they could be frozen then.
Don't forget:

  0K..................100K
  Dead          Still Dead