this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
1213 points (92.4% liked)

Science Memes

11243 readers
3662 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
1213
Burning Up (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
529 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Okay so fahrenheit has a well-defined high and low, but an arbitrary freezing point of one certain chemical. All other chemical freezing points are arbitrary.

Celsius has an arbitrary high and low, but a well-defined freezing point of that same chemical. All other freezing points are arbitrary.

If your motivation is to minimize the amount of arbitrary values you have to memorize, fahrenheit is the clear winner.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The zero C is freezing and 100 C is boiling, so not really arbitrary.

But it's pretty hard to define a scale that has intuitive, round numbers for everything we might care about.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You're correct. In a lab setting, 0C and 100C are not arbitrary.

In the weather forecast, they are.

Which ties into your final point, it's hard to define a scale that is best for everything, which is exactly what I've been saying this whole time. Fahrenheit is better for some things, Celsius for others.

The only reason people in this thread are saying otherwise is because for some reason they've tied up some significant part of their self-worth into their belief that "lmao DAE fahrenheit bad amirite??1?", and they mistakenly believe that those of us that understand nuance are trying to belittle or disparage them in some way. I assure you, we are not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

0C and 100C are not arbitrary.

well i mean technically, the only reason they aren't arbitrary is because the mean something, the numbers arent significant, it's what they represent, which is the boiling/freezing point of water.

The only reason people in this thread are saying otherwise is because for some reason they’ve tied up some significant part of their self-worth into their belief that “lmao DAE fahrenheit bad amirite??1?”, and they mistakenly believe that those of us that understand nuance are trying to belittle or disparage them in some way. I assure you, we are not.

i'm seeing people put very little thought into the things they're saying, i just recently posted a comment covering a few of those things in this thread. For some reason europeans seem to just get absolutely brainfucked when presented with the concept of a unit system that isn't metric, it's like your literal entire lives are built upon the concept of 0 10 100 scaling, and you can't consider literally anything outside of it.

Now maybe i'm being a little hyperbolic here, but US peeps pretty well understand that we could just "be using celsius" that's not really a wacky concept or idea here. Celsius peeps really seem to think that if they had to use fahrenheit, they would probably die from accidental over-consumption of water, somehow. And in their defense, a lot of our shit is kinda fucking weird. But again, it's really not that bad.

at least, this has been my experience from the various threads i've been in on this topic over time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The 0 in Fahrenheit was based on nothing and the 100F was supposed to be human temperature but it is off by some degrees

The water is not an arbitrary temperature, the weather is water dependant, at 0C the water will freeze and you get snow/ice instead of rain

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

0°F is when the ocean freezes

100° F was human body temperature, later revised somewhat with better measurements and a decrease of parasites . The average person in those days in London had a slightly higher body temperature than today

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

0F is not ocean freezing, is the freezing temp of a brine mix that he chose arbitrarily (some think that he chose that temp because it was close to the coldest his town had ever been and he used it to calibrate the scales of his thermometers)

FYI, the ocean freezes at around 28F

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Oceans freezing also depends on currents, and mixing of the water from the surface. 28° will freeze water in a room.

This is why often the ocean is not frozen at much lower temperatures.

I’m not at all cognizant of how 0 was decided

[–] ayyy 3 points 2 months ago

It’s not like the weather depends on the boiling point of formaldehyde…