Memes

And a new USDefaultism while we're at it.

Ik it exists on reddit, but it would be nice to not make it around Americans.

Some older people in the UK still prefer Fahrenheit, Celsius is still the official/default unit however.

A politician here recently tried to promote returning the UK to Imperial units, it has gone nowhere so far.

I did exactly this but with 24 hour clock lol

Celsius is also kinda arbitrary, but at least it sets its 0 and 100 to very fundamental, observable temperatures, namely the points where the state of matter of water changes. There are more constraints to it of course, in particular atmospheric pressure, and the modern definition of Celsius is actually purely based on Kelvin (which in turn uses the Boltzmann constant), but as long as you're not high up in the Andes, everybody can observe a pretty good approximation of it.

Its prevalence is also the outcome of a long process of many different scales. In 19th century Europe, before Celsius completely took over, Réaumur was also very popular. It set 0° at the freezing point of water and the boiling point at 80° under normal atmospheric conditions. Thinking about it, it's quite wonky to do that, but at least it's easy to convert to and from Celsius. On the other hand, the similarity in temperatures makes it slightly harder for plausibility checks.

I ran into this when researching the history of some stuff and the specific scale was not always included, but the temperatures in the particular context both made sense as Celsius and Réaumur. That's when you then have start digging through a whole early 19th century 500 page book printed in a German Gothic font just to see whether the specific temperature scale is mentioned anywhere.

This, for sure. I live in the US and wanted to learn to understand Celsius so I switched my phone to use it. Internalizing a system works where translating/converting does not. I quickly learned that I feel comfortable in temperatures in the 20s. Since I feel comfortable in Fahrenheit temps in the upper 60s to mid 70s I can guess what the conversion is for most temps, but I don't have to do it to understand that I like how 22 C feels.

Similarly, if you're traveling and having to use a foreign currency I prefer to establish an idea in my head of cheap, reasonable, expensive than stopping to convert every price exactly. A "reasonable price" is relative to the item and location, of course, and should also affect my perspective.

Absorbing a new system by this method works fairly easily for temperatures and money, but less so for other measurements. I don't have as fine-tuned a sense of what ounces, pounds, or grams feel like as I do units of temperature. And I am always adding or subtracting 12 to understand time when expressed as 13h and up.

During the brief period when the US was encouraging metric system understanding there were many highway speed limit signs expressed as 55 mph / 88 kph. Every time I need to make that conversion I think of 5/8 because of that sign. And I usually just make guesstimates that work well enough.

I like learning new things. The generation before me in my family turned off their brains long ago and now suffer dementia. I work to keep my mind active. Learning other units of measure is one example.

Finally I'll say that I WISH I could get to a point of understanding languages this way without translation.

Thank you, this is a a great idea! I've found these common temperatures online, in case anyone wants to learn them:

Isn't Fahrenheit a "feel" temperature unit anyway? Once you need precision (science), even Americans switch to Celsius/Kelvin.

I find the conversion between the two easy enough to do it my head.

This isn't exact but is close enough for conversations and 99% of my needs.

(Temp in F - 30) / 2

Examples

70F:
70F - 30 = 40
40 / 2 = 20C

10F:
10F - 30 = -20
-20 / 2 = -10

The actual number is 21 / -12 but this is close enough for me 99.9% of the time