The problem is that Fahrenheit is a bit more convenient for describing the weather. Inches and feet are a bit more convenient for measuring human scale things and for being easily divisible by more numbers. And we’re used to the rest of it.
Unless someone comes along and forces it on you, for the average person, there’s not enough incentive to switch.
As someone born and living in a country that uses the metric system, I do not understand a bit of what inches and feets mean. Tell me something has 10-15 cm, and I know what it means. I measure 173cm, I know what one meter is about. 5'10? What the hell is that?! 5 feet and 10 inches? Some people have small feet, some have larger. And what is an "inch"? :)
Oh, and fahrenheit, what the hell it means? 0ºC means ice, 100ºC means boiling water, 40º feels summer around here..
I guess I'm saying that you understand the values of the imperial system because you're used to them, as I'm used to values in the metric system..
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that a system where the majority of air temperatures in the vast majority of the country fall between 0 and 100 is slightly more convenient than one in which they fall between -17 and 37. 0 is really cold it doesn’t frequently get colder than that in most of the country. 100 is really hot, in most places it doesn’t get hotter than that.
Feet are slightly more convent for declining human sized things because meters are just a little too big to describe human height and centimeters are a bit you
If you were designing a system to describe humans with no other consideration you’d probably pick one where 10 units was the average human height. And feet is closer to that than meters. Also you can divide 12 by 6 and 3.
I’m not saying that customary is superior just that it does has certain advantages.
Saying "I'm 5 feet 11 inches" requires about 3 digits, saying "I'm 180cm" also requires that many digits. It takes about as many syllables as well, because in practice you say "five-(feet)-e-leven" or "one-eighty" (Note that I don't know how to say US customary units out loud)
Was in Fairbanks last weekend and it was -15F. So, having Fahrenheit staying positive for weather in US, is not really an argument.
I am fine with Celsius based on water (0 freezing and 100 boiling). But I get that changing is confusing when you have adjusted your whole life to a system. If taught at school and displayed, in half a generation we could move to metric. Like others said groceries are already there.
No one is arguing that temperatures never go outside of 0-100. The argument is that a scale that generally falls between 0-100 is inherently slightly more convenient than that that generally falls between -17 and 37.
Obviously both can be adapter to.
But if you took a group of aliens and asked them to come up with a temperature scale that was only used to convey how cold or warm the temperature felt to humans, they would almost certainly use human body temperature in their design process not the freezing and boiling points of water.
This isn’t to say that Celsius isn’t perfectly fine and superior in most ways. I’m not insulting you or attempting to participate in some kind of culture war.
But if you find yourself unable to agree that one system has some inherent advantages over another, even if they don’t outweigh the disadvantages, you should step back and think a little more objectively.
> The argument is that a scale that generally falls between 0-100 is inherently slightly more convenient than that that generally falls between -17 and 37.
I guess it is true for us living in US, but lots of people live in places where it never goes below 0 Celsius (32 F). So I could see them arguing the same with a 0-50 scale.
> But if you took a group of aliens and asked them to come up with a temperature scale that was only used to convey how cold or warm the temperature felt to humans, they would almost certainly use human body temperature in their design process not the freezing and boiling points of water.
Probably, even though they might just get the coldest (-128 F -89 C) and hottest (134 F 56C) temperatures on earth, and scales it from 0-100 so everyone is covered.
You're just saying this because you're American and accustomed to it.
To you, a 0-100 scale makes sense but to me it doesn't because 0f (-17c) is way rarer of a temp than 100f (38c).
Anyway, from the metric perspective, most people look at it like... 0 is coat and boots weather, + 10 degrees is jacket weather, + 10 degrees is t-shirt weather, and + 10 degrees is hot. IMO, using "freezing" as the reference kinda makes sense...
It should be noted here that the daily high for a good 1/3-1/2 of America is below 0C/32F/freezing for a good 3-5 months each year. Our weather varies much more significantly than most (not all) of Europe. Even with Fahrenheit, it is not uncommon for places like Detroit to be sub-zero for days without getting into positive temperatures.
I've personally lived in Marquette, Michigan and now live in Phoenix, Arizona and have experience both -40F(-40C) and 118F(47.7C). To me, the 0 = really cold, 25 = cold, 50 = mild, 75 = comfortable, 100 = really hot scale makes sense having lived through those extremes. But you're right, that's largely because it's what I grew up with. And with that in mind, it is extremely unlikely America would ever transition away from it for that very reason.
Both 0F and 100F happen regularly in many parts of the US and I would not say here one is rarer than the other. NYC has seen both in the last 12 months.
"Fahrenheit is a bit more convenient for describing the weather" - you might need to show us an example here that is not biased. Because to me, Celsius is a bit more convenient for describing the weather.
On the Fahrenheit scale, the majority of daily temperatures in the vast majority of the US fall between 0 and 100, which is -17 and 37 Celsius, and it’s more granular without introducing a decimal point.
I enjoyed reading this exchange, it's really a matter of perspective.
For someone like me living in a country with the metric system there's no issues with negative values for the temperature. It just mean it's below freezing, which is cold, the more below freezing it is, the colder it is. And inversely the more above freezing it is, the hotter it is. For me 20C feels good, 30C is too hot, 40C is at the point where I can't work anymore, and anything above that doesn't exist around here. 100C is where water is boiling at sea level. Easy.
Another thing that's interesting to me is that going from 300m to 0.3km is automatic, it maps to exactly the same concept to me in my mind, I don't feel like I'm doing any conversion at all and one is not harder to use than the other.
In metric world nobody cares about decimal points in temperature outside. Measuring precision is not that good because of wind, humidity, exposure to sun etc. We just don’t need that granularity, so it is really hard to understand why would you need that. Is there really any difference between 56°F and 57°F that you can feel and want to measure?
And choice of 0/100 for weather is absolutely baseless. You do have below-zero days and in some places it can be over 100. With Celsius you know when it’s going to be ice on the roads and when rain becomes snow.
below zero days are really really crazy cold and above 100 days are really really crazy hot. I don't think the fact that things occasionally exceed the 100 point "normal" range makes it less useful, if anything the out of bounds numbers emphasize the severity of the temperature. it's common where I grew up in the midwest US to hear "wow its going to be BELOW ZERO" as a way to express extreme cold
For me personally “really really cold” starts below -30°C and crazy hot is above +30°C. It’s very subjective and outside of US many areas have climate where Fahrenheit doesn’t make sense at all.
maybe that's why its popular in the US? for most of this country the 0-100 range works quite well to describe the normal range of outdoor temperature. we seem to like 0-100 ranges, for instance speed in MPH works out nicely.. "over 100 MPH!" is a common expression for extreme speed drivers. school grades are often a value out of 100, etc. which makes you wonder why we don't prefer metric lol
0 degrees F is a cold winter day, 100 degrees F is a hot summer day
0 degrees C is a cold winter day, 100 degrees C means you're dead
I think he's suggesting that a 0-100 scale for temperature/"relative warmth outside" is more intuitive than a 0-37 scale. It's easier to to place 73 degrees on a 0-100 relative warmth scale than it is to place 18 degrees on a 0-37 scale (unless of course you grew up calibrated to the 0-37 scale and know that 18degrees means you maybe need a light jacket or whatever).
I think it's funny that one of the main benefits of metric is its base-10-ness where things scale so nicely from 1-10-100-1000 etc. but then for temperature we're supposed to be fine with a 0-37? Fahrenheit is basically the 1-100 version of temperature (when it comes to weather).
It is what you are used to for both of you. you could make your own measurement system and it would work fine once you get used to it - until you need to communicate with someone else who isn't used to it.
A big part of it is certainly what you're used to.
The other part, which I'm sympathetic to, is that for human scale everyday things, Fahrenheit 0 degrees lines up with really darned cold, 100 degrees with really hot outside of an oven, and the degree size is about twice as granular as Celsius.
And while Celsius degree size is indeed widely used in engineering calculations, you're often using Kelvin as the absolute temperature scale. (Which does use Celsius degree increments of course.)
> and the degree size is about twice as granular as Celsius.
And then they'll argue that the inch is more convenient than the centimeter because it's twice as large.
That's backwards. Fractions of an inch are in far more common usage than fractions of a centigrade. Ideal might be both a smaller inch and a smaller centigrade, but between the two a smaller inch is more helpful than a smaller centigrade.
Perhaps, but useless for most purposes. You need to know how think of a coat to wear and you need a mental map from some number to some coat. It doesn't matter what the scale is, just that you have that map.
I agree its having the mental map that matters but my intention was to disagree with the parent comment's claim that Fahrenheit is more appropriate to the "human scale of things".
its a small advantage, but I think zero indicating when things might freeze is a more useful than "0 degrees lines up with really darned cold"
To me, below zero Centigrade lines up with "really darned cold". It's all subjective.
> zero indicating when things might freeze is useful
Of course it is, parent is being silly.
Picking some other non-zero random number for freezing just seems absurd to me. But that's because Centigrade is what I am familiar with.
Say pick freezing = 12, or 47?. If those numbers for freezing seem absurd to you, then consider that the only advantage that "32" has for you is that you're familiar with it. People will find reasons to defend whichever one they grew up with.
The argument is that a scale that generally falls between 0-100 is inherently slightly more convenient than that that generally falls between -17 and 37.
Obviously both can be adapted to.
But if you took a group of aliens and asked them to come up with a temperature scale that was only used to convey how cold or warm the temperature felt to humans, they would almost certainly use human body temperature in their design process not the freezing and boiling points of water.
This isn’t to say that Celsius isn’t perfectly fine and superior in most ways. I’m not insulting anyone or attempting to participate in some kind of culture war.
Celsius is obviously a better scale for determining when water freezes. But I’ve never found myself paying attention to that. Mostly because any problems that I’d worry about related to the water freezing happen well below freezing.
But if you find yourself unable to agree that one system has some inherent advantages over another, even if they don’t outweigh the disadvantages, you should step back and think a little more objectively.
> if you took a group of aliens and asked them to come up with a temperature scale that was only used to convey how cold or warm the temperature felt to humans, they would almost certainly use human body temperature in their design process not the freezing and boiling points of water.
This is completely nonsensical. I draw the exact opposite conclusion regarding what some "logical" aliens from planet Vulcan would choose.
> generally falls between -17 and 37.
What are you even talking about? -17 is a complete irrelevance to me, it does not happen, and I often deal with water or objects over 37c. Those are parochial numbers.
Your conclusion is predicated on finding reasons to defend what you're familiar with. There is no objectivity to it. Nor can there be.
When defining a scale from scratch only for the purpose of defining how the temperature feels it a human, you don’t think human body temperature would factor in?
> What are you even talking about? -17 is a complete irrelevance to me, it does not happen,
It lines up with 0F, which in most of the US is about as cold as it gets. You could be more specific and lick the weight 95% percentile coldest yearly low and get -19 or -16 or something. The specific number is irrelevant. The point is that a scale where the daily values generally fall between 0 and 100 is something that most people would admit is a point in that scale’s favor.
That doesn’t mean that Fahrenheit is better than Celsius. It does mean that there are objective advantages to it for some purposes.
If you can’t sit down and analyze Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin and make a list of pros and cons for each, you’re just being stubborn.
> It lines up with 0F, which in most of the US is about as cold as it gets.
"most of the US" . And yet you think that a group of aliens looking at planet Earth would anchor on that region. This makes no sense. It is what I meant by "parochial".
> The specific number is irrelevant.
Lets set the zero point to an irrelevant number, it's be great!
> does mean that there are objective advantages to it for some purposes.
Sure, I agree. In some places.
> If you can’t sit down and analyze
I can. But if you don't know better than to avoid focussing on that, you're missing the mere familiarity that was emphasised repeatedly.
"most of the US" . And yet you think that a group of aliens looking at planet Earth would anchor on that region. This makes no sense. It is what I meant by "parochial".
Then imagine a group of Aliens is building a scale for the United States of America, which in context is the only relevant country since this entire discussion is about the US switching to Celsius. It doesn’t actually have to be aliens. Just a neutral party with no bias towards an existing scale.
> I can. But if you don't know better than to avoid focussing on that, you're missing the mere familiarity that was emphasised repeatedly.
Familiarity is obviously the reason that the US is a metric holdout. No one has ever argued otherwise.
The only point I am making in this entire forsaken thread is that for the very specific purpose of air temperature in the United States, F has a nice advantage to C in that the numbers normally line up 0 to 100 and that all other things being equal humans find scales from 0-100 pleasant.
Multiple People in this thread who have no familiarity with Fahrenheit have agreed with this.
Because it is slightly nicer scale in this specific place for this specific purpose, no one is going to voluntarily switch the way that some people voluntarily switch to grams when baking or mm when working with small objects.
> 0 lines up with freezing point is useless for most purposes
Rubbish. Absolute nonsense. It's very useful.
But, each system has points where you can say that it is more convenient . You could defend Fahrenheit all day. I could counter with Celsius usefulness. "below zero" being a synonym for "below freezing" is one of those.
But you miss the context - you will defend whichever one you grew up with. You look for reasons to defend what you know. It is mere familiarity, nothing more.
>But, each system has points where you can say that it is more convenient . You could defend Fahrenheit all day. I could counter with Celsius usefulness. "below zero" being a synonym for "below freezing" is one of those.
Of course it does. That’s my entire point. For the intended purpose of measuring air temperature there are some advantages to Fahrenheit. Celsius is not self evidently superior in that regard. Therefore no one using Fahrenheit is going to change unless forced.
The freezing point of water is useful for some things, but I’ve never paid particular attention to 32F because almost all of the bad things I need to worry about related to freezing water happen much lower than that.
So making 32F the 0 point of the scale has few objective benefits to me.
> all of the bad things I need to worry about related to freezing water happen much lower than that.
Well, that's you, it's not me. 0F is a completely useless benchmark where I am, it never happens. And someone north of you will want a lower point. This is all parochial.
But you miss the context - you will defend whichever one you grew up with. You look for reasons to defend what you know. It is mere familiarity, nothing more.
I’m not defending anything. I admit that Celsius is superior to Fahrenheit overall if we are going to adopt one temperature scale for all temperatures.
What I’m saying is that a scale where most most values on most days fall between 0-100 is objectively better than a scale where they fall between -17 and 37.
There are only 2 states in the country where the average winter lows are below 0 and they have tiny populations. So 0 isn’t set at a perfect temperature for the purpose of air temperature in the US, but it’s not too far off from it.
> But you miss the context - you will defend whichever one you grew up with. You look for reasons to defend what you know. It is mere familiarity, nothing more.
I didn’t grow up using metric, but I use grams for baking and generally use mm for designing things. Despite the difficulties (most recipes in the US aren’t metric).
And there are several people in this thread who report that they grew up with Celsius and have never used Fahrenheit, but they agree that for air temperature it’s a nice scale.
Not as laughable as "metric is more convenient for human scale things". "Human scale things" includes fractions of an inch and fractions of a mile, which are horrible in customary units, and includes both the foot and yard which are used confusingly interchangeably. Metric is far superior for human scale measurements.
And that's only length. It gets worse outside of length. Like WTF is an ounce?
And using different ounces for metals, fluids, drugs, and, er, everything else - how does that not send people screaming into the arms of the metric system?!
And then there's the hundredweight, where "hundred" actually means "eight"...
Oddly enough as a person born in a metric country, now living in Canada which is metric, and always educated in metric, I agree with you on the feet and inches. "A couple of inches" doesn't imply nearly the precision that "5 centimeters" (using the US spelling on purpose) implies. Similarly my own height of 5'10 is much more "human scale" than the 178cm that it says on my passport.
Not for engineering though!!! Being able to add 1/64 and 5/16 and 17/32 etc. in your head without stumbling is a skill that I did not acquire.
Don't agree on the Fahrenheit though and for the same reason! Degrees are just the right scale, and besides, anchored at freezing (0) and typical boiling (100) points. But that's just habits. Probably if I'd grown up with Fahrenheit, I'd prefer it too. And besides the oven defaulted to Fahrenheit and we never changed it. 350F...
On Fahrenheit, the Americans are surely right. For describing the weather, a system where the usual range is 30-100 is clearly more useful than one where it's 0-37, because you can say "high 70s" instead of the weirdly specific "about 27", and "low 40s" instead of the awkward "around 5 to 7".
I say this as a European who has never used Fahrenheit.
Around here, temperatures range from -40ºC to +40ºC. The most important information temperature offers is whether it is going to snow or rain. 0ºC being roughly the temperature where that transition happens makes thinking about it seem more natural than picking a random number out of the 30-100 scale (well, -40-+104).
> Inches and feet are a bit more convenient for measuring human scale things
nope, this is mere familiarity. You find it more natural because you're more used to it, nothing more.
There is nothing convenient about a system where "below zero" and "below freezing" are not synonyms. Or at least that's how I find it. because of what I'm used to. But at least I realise that might be a fact about me, not a fact about the world.
I replied to you above for temperature but for human scale measurement, if you were to design a system for human scale measurement from scratch, you’d likely make 10 units equal to the average height (you could also argue for making 1 unit equal to that).
Feet are closer to that ideal than meters. That’s all that I meant. Also 12 inches is divisible by 3 and 6. And if you get into fractions of an inch, you always stick with powers of 2 which makes some math easier. Some math so much easier in metric.
The more important factor is obviously familiarity. Both systems clearly work. But neither is inherently superior in all applications.
Unless someone comes along and forces it on you, for the average person, there’s not enough incentive to switch.