lemm.ee

9 points

2 months ago

-18 is such an arbitrary place for “special precautions”. at 0, I know to start driving more carefully since the roads ice up. at -15, i know to wear long johns. at +15, i know to start using a thinner jacket. at -30, i know to use a thick hat and wax on my cheeks to prevent the blood vessels from rupturing. at +30, I know to use a large hat and sun cream on my cheeks to prevent them from burning.

report

KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com

[ - ]

-1 points

2 months ago

18 is such an arbitrary place for “special precautions”

cool little trick, you see how -18 is like, pretty close to -20, yeah. You can just round them. It really doesn’t matter

report

[ - ]

3 points

2 months ago

see, that’s what i’m saying. having a scale that starts at “it really doesn’t matter” makes it hard to use for everyday things.

report

KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com

[ - ]

1 point

2 months ago

but it literally has numbers?

You know that celsius starts at -273.15 degrees right? That’s ENTIRELY arbitrary, and by your logic, makes the system useless.

you’re literally just making this up?

report

[ - ]

1 point

2 months ago

no, Celsius starts at +273.15 K, because that’s where an element we are all dependent on to live and in contact with every day undergoes an important phase transition.

What happens at 0°F?

report

KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com

[ - ]

1 point

2 months ago

What happens at 0°F?

why does it matter? Water freezes at 32 degrees f. What happens at 32 degrees C? What happens at 212 degrees C?

Also no, it doesn’t start at +273.15 K, that’s not how number ranges work. If you have a list of numbers between -10 and 10. And you were to sort them, least to most, -10 would be at the bottom, obviously.

you realize that temperature is a measure of the energy within a substance/material right? It’s intrinsically tried to the physics and atomic structure underlying the material substance. That always starts at the lowest temperature point, the point being where it is is just a reference

report

[ - ]

1 point

2 months ago

it starts at +273.15K because that is the lower of the two reference points used in its creation. the Kelvin scale was created later and builds on the Celsius scale. of course lower temps are sorted first, that’s not what matters. it’s why we call these scales “degrees”, after all.

why it matters is because the scale i use every day constantly gets “verified” by passing the zero marker and showing that things outside freeze. that makes it a good reference point that builds its own intuition.

that’s what this is all about, after all: how useful a scale is for everyday use. a scale that is relevant to my needs and that has important events happen on easy-to-remember points of the scale requires very little teaching.

report