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76 points

Fahrenheit: how hot humans feel

Celsius: how hot water feels

Kelvin & Rankine: how hot atoms feel

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44 points

I don’t think how hot humans feel works at all, it’s just arbitrary

Can humans survive 100 degree heat? Yes so it doesn’t represent 100%

150 for 3rd degree burns (almost instant), does Fahrenheit go off base 150? Also no

What about cold? Well -40 requires a lot of layers, so then +40 should be pretty hot for humans right? Nope, because it’s not related to humans at all

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25 points

100°F was supposed to be average human body temp. Guy who made the scale fucked up his math and we ended up actually at 98.6°F

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12 points

Nah, that’s a myth. It’s actually a little more complicated than that, and the actual measurements changed over time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit

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12 points

If farenheit represents how humans feel then 50 is the most comfortable temperature right?

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7 points

0 should be the most comfortable, with less being cold and more being hot.

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4 points

In human terms, only 65 and above is passable.

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4 points

Neither will kill you (usually) but both suck.

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3 points
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I don’t think how hot humans feel works at all, it’s just arbitrary

Fahrenheit was originally calculated to be 64 even divisions between water freezing temp and human body temp, then 32 more units below freezing.

Then ambient human body temp was recalculated from 96F to 98.6F.

So it’s not exactly arbitrary. It’s based on powers of 2, based upon an inaccurate measurement.

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6 points

I mean, the temperature 0 was assigned because it was the lowest temperature that winter in Fahrenheit’s town, and the “powers of two” was only chosen because it was simple to mark degree lines on his instrument. Feels quite arbitrary to me…

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1 point
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Can humans survive 100 degree heat? Yes so it doesn’t represent 100%

I have no idea what this means.

150 for 3rd degree burns (almost instant), does Fahrenheit go off base 150? Also no

What about cold? Well -40 requires a lot of layers, so then +40 should be pretty hot for humans right? Nope, because it’s not related to humans at all

Why do these matter? What percentage of humans live where it’s regularly -40 degrees? Why does the scale need to be perfect in your opinion? And how is Celsius better?

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4 points

I have no idea what this means.

Humans can survive 100 F so it’s not a scale of 0-100, which you would expect for a system based on humans

Why does the scale need to be perfect in your opinion?

The person I responded to said it was based off humans, I was arguing that it wasn’t because no patterns exist in relation to humans

And how is Celsius better?

Well the person claimed it’s based on the temperature of water at sea level with 0 being freezing and 100 being boiling. This would be the 0-100% for water

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-4 points

No one said it represents “100%”, whatever that is even supposed to mean. 100F is really hot outside. 0 F is really cold. Doesn’t have to make 100% sense. Celsius doesn’t make perfect sense either. There is no perfect magical scale that works completely.

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4 points
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Fahrenheit only works like that if ur used to extreme cold tempature. Anything under 10c (50f) is cold af to me and 38c (100f) is hot sure but nowhere near as cold as -17c (0f) is

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3 points

It’s pointing out multiple ways that it doesn’t represent people

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1 point

“really hot” and “really cold” are supremely useless terms in this context though.

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5 points
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Yeah, this gets repeated (by Americans) every time a discussion about temperature measuring systems comes up, but it is complete nonsense. The vast majority of Earth’s population are completely fine with measuring how hot they feel in celsius, it is only people who are unaccustomed to that system who thinks it is somehow unqualified to do that.

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1 point

American who lives in a country that uses C now.

20=frickin cold 30=swampy ass 40=nope

Not enough degrees of separation

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3 points

20 isn’t cold at all, it’s perfectly warm.

10 is nippy, but you still warm up quick after a few minutes walking, and get sweaty if you’re working on something.

0 is cold enough for a couple layers. Jumper + jacket so you can take one off if you warm up too much.

-10 doesn’t feel that much different to 0.

-20 is time to put on a thicker coat over the jumper.

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1 point

I lived for a third of my life in a country that uses Celsius, and the switch to Fahrenheit was not only seamless, it made much more sense to me intuitively. Whereas I was fine using Celsius, I don’t really want to go back.

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1 point

Downvote my experience all you want, bitches

It’s not gonna change

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