100F was defined as the human body temperature (The guy they used had a cold or something so it’s off by a degree and a half.)
That’s useful for perception of heat. When the dry bulb gets above 100F, wind only cools you down by sweat evaporation, and when the wet bulb gets above 100F, even that can’t cool you down, and you will die if you don’t get to a cooler or drier environment.
This is more intuitive than 36.5C.
what Fahrenheit used for his endpoints was 1) the melting point of a brine mixture that he didn’t write down the ratio of, and 2) his wife’s armpit.
those “bulb” things is something i only ever hear of from americans. it’s never used here.
and I fail to see how two numbers are somehow differently intuitive. they are just numbers. also, 36.5 is too low. it’s pretty much 37.0 now, because average body temp has interestingly enough shifted since he took those measurements.
What does Europe use for apparent temperature measurement then? Just humidity and not evaporation?
Dry bulb is a normal temperature reading with say a thermometer. Wet bulb is that same thermometer but it is wrapped in a wet cloth to simulate evaporation of sweat.
The purpose of wet bulb temperature measurement is to fix the dangerous temperature threshold at body temperature instead of having to adjust for humidity. So if the wet bulb temperature crosses 35C/95F you know that it is dangerous to even be outside because your sweat can’t even evaporate enough to prevent you from overheating just standing in the shade.
Dry bulb is the temperature independent of humidity. Wet bulb is has a wet cloth on the thermometer bulb. This simulates how much sweat cools you in the current humidity and wind.
Measuring humidity instead and cross-referencing to get heat index is more common these days, but IMO it’s worse. 120 in the desert vs 120 heat index due to humidity is the difference between someone using a hair dryer on your face and getting cooked in a steam room, and it doesn’t consider wind and cloud cover.
So you’re saying that 0 and 100 aren’t intuitively obvious? I find that really strange when it’s doing a better job keeping to base 10 than the metric system in this particular use case.
the numbers may be, but if you asked me to tell you what they feel like i would have to convert them to celsius first. where i live temperatures are generally between -30 and +30, and i could tell you in an instant what I would wear for a given temperature in that range. 50F though? no clue. since it’s right between 0 and 100 i guess it would be just right, temperature wise, so t-shirt and long pants?
Can you remember that at temperatures near 0F and 100F, you need to take special precautions when going outside? The rest is a matter of getting used to what the numbers mean, but those are very intuitive danger points.
yeah no shit, but think of it this way, if you were put into a place that was 100f, you would go “damn this bitch hot out here” and if you were put into a place that was 0f you would go “damn this joint cold as fuck fr”
Stop thinking in celsius.
When it comes to a single number on a scale, whatever you grew up with will be more “obvious”. 100F doesn’t give me any more information than 38C does. The whole “base 10” thing only matters if you are actually doing some math to that number.
Base 10 makes it much easier to remember.
When was the last time you did math related to temperature?
100F definitely gives more insight as to the temperature. It’s a 100/100. That’s as hot as a person can really tolerate. If you understand percentages or how to rate things on a scale of 1-10, you understand fahrenheit.
For Celsius, 0 is freezing cold and 100 is boiling hot - that’s intuitive too.
I have literally never felt 0°F in my life and couldn’t tell you how cold it is, just that it’s very cold. I believe everyone has a rough understanding how 0°C and 100°C feel though.
It is intuitive, and that’s fine. Having the same intuition around human comfort zones is also fine. One measurement system can’t really cover everything.
People tend not to want to live in places where it’s routinely under 0F or over 100F. You’ll tolerate it, but you won’t like it. It’s a very natural range of human comfort.
No, they’re not. I couldn’t tell what those numbers mean even if you asked, but I can tell what 0°C outside feels, and what 100°C sauna feels. I can also tell that 21°C is a nice ambient temperature for chilling, and 15-20°C is ideal for most outdoor sports.
Yeah sure those are not necessarily nice round numbers, but I’ve used the scale all my life so it’s intuitive to me, same as the Fahrentrash is intuitive to you
No, that’s not how this works.
You understand the concept of a scale. If I asked you to rate something on a scale of 1-10, you know what i mean. It has nothing to do with intuitiveness. If I asked you to rate something on a scale of 7-23, you’d know what I mean, even though the numbers are different than what you’re used to.
So if I said it was 100F outside, you’d know that’s very uncomfortably hot, as hot as a normal person can really tolerate, because you’d recognize it as the high end of the scale.
Everyone can understand fahrenheit, some people just try really hard not to.
yeah, and it seems to me like they’re the wrong ones here, because i can think about things in celsius perfectly fine without my worldview imploding, in fact i can pretty accurately estimate temperature conversions even.
Like it’s great that you guys don’t have to use it, but please think about it a little bit harder before saying something really goofy that can be explained easily. Or just like, shitpost.
Um. No.
If I said a movie was a 7/10, you would understand what that means because it’s a scale. You don’t have to “grow up” using a 0-10 scale to understand it.
Like if I asked you to rate something on a scale of 4-17, you’d understand what I mean. The numbers are different but the concept of a scale remains the same.
if I knew that you are a european and you told me a movie was 5/10, i would assume it was average. if i knew you were American, i would assume it was dogshit.
Americans have a weird relationship with numbers.
also, as mentioned in another post: if 0 is too cold and 100 is too hot, surely 50 would be a pleasant temperature?
“Americans” ah, I see. You don’t actually care about effective systems of measurement, you just want to shit on people that are different from you.
Also, as answered in another post: Why would you assume that humans, an endothermic species, prefers exactly 50% thermal energy? Of course we sit around the 70F region, we’re warm-blooded mammals. We don’t want to be half cold, we want to be mostly warm.
No matter how much you complain or argue, it’s never going to be true that Celsius is the one-and-only most perfect system of temperature measurement. The fact is that both systems have their applications, as any intelligent member of the scientific community would tell you.
Get over it.
Really not. Basically, you just need to peg feelings to a number, just like you are doing.
Celsius:
below -20 = deadly even with good gear, you can’t spend long here
-15 = very dangerous / deadly
-10 = starting to get dangerous
-5 = starting to get uncomfortable
0 = very cold
5 = cold
10 = a little cold
15 = cool
20 = nice
25 = warm
30 = hot
35 = starting to get uncomfortable
40 = starting to get dangerous
45 = very dangerous / deadly
50+ = deadly even with good gear, you can’t spend long here
I don’t think you understand what I said.
Also, that’s a lot of explaining, and lots of feelings associated with arbitrary numbers. Fahrenheit doesn’t need anywhere near that level of explanation. It doesn’t necessitate the pegging of feelings to random numbers.
The sentence “Fahrenheit is a 0-100 scale of how hot it is outside” is all anyone needs to immediately understand and be able to use fahrenheit. I didn’t need to type out a long list of what each temperature value means to me. There is no need for a mneumonic such as “10 is cold, 20s not, 30s warm, and 40s hot”
If you’re doing math in a lab, absolutely use Celsius. I’m not saying it doesn’t have a place. It’s just not the be-all end-all most perfectest temperature measurement system ever.
But to understand “x out of a possible y” you have to understand scales, or at least percentages which is the same concept. Then, if you understand percentages, you understand fahrenheit.
Honestly more places should do what the U.S. does and just teach both (and Kelvin). Because ultimately there isn’t one perfect system of measurement for every possible application. Celsius is of course better in lab settings, Fahrenheit is better for cooking and meteorology.
