this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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Science Memes

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Fahrenheit vs. Celsius vs. Kelvin (i.imgur.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 76 points 1 year ago (26 children)

Fahrenheit: how hot humans feel

Celsius: how hot water feels

Kelvin & Rankine: how hot atoms feel

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (20 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

And yet, as a person, Fahrenheit seems far more intuitive and Celsius arbitrary.

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