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Fahrenheit vs. Celsius vs. Kelvin (i.imgur.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Based on human perception, based on water chemistry, based on physics.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago (2 children)

You'll be shocked to learn that the distance in Kelvin is also adjusted to water "chemistry", albeit changing the aggregate state seems more physics to me, since no molceules are reacting with each other.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

Thankfully that has been redefined using the Boltzmann constant, so now anyone in the universe can agree on °C and K without needing to measure any Vienna standard ocean water.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You can't change the aggregate state of a single molecule, or how do you mean that? Excluding plasma.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

you can of a lot of molecules though. and tgat is classically "physics" rather than "chemistry". Classical chemistry is reactiona between atoms or molecules to form new ones.

If you get deeper into it, the lines between chemistry and physics blur anyways.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Ah yes, now I understand your previous comment. My reading error, thanks.

[–] CookieJarObserver 11 points 10 months ago

Nah Kelvin is just on hydrogen perspective

(Kelvin and Celsius are the same scale just with different 0)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Zero Fahrenheit is the freezing point of brine (of a certain concentration). That's water chemistry.

Originally, 90F was based on the average human body temperature, but that later changed to 96F, which just goes to show how arbitrary that scale is.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's all arbitrary. Someone just decided to base a scale off of something and that something isn't fixed from the start. The meter used to be based off the measurement of the earth, but now it's based off of light.

It's just some random semi-useful starting point that we all agree on so we're using the same language.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

The meter did not change, science has merely defined it more precisely and reliably over time. It is a measure of length, still one 40 millionth of the circumference of the earth through the poles. Other definitions like the speed of light definition will give you the same result. These newer definitions have reduced uncertainty and added ways to reproduce its length by natural means. But it's not like the 'original' meter was shorter or longer than today's meter, at least not by any noticeable margin.

Shifting the top end of a temperature scale by over five percent of the scale is a bit more arbitrary than that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

So, Kelvin in Physics, Celsius in daily usage and Fahrenheit...?