this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
559 points (75.5% liked)

Science Memes

11161 readers
1977 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
559
temperature (mander.xyz)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
378 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Both are equally arbitrary. You just have to know a handful of temperatures that you use in your day to day life either way.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Celsius being based on water makes it the most intuitive of the three imo.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Hum... Around here water boils at ~96°C (some labs measure that). And it seems to not freeze at 0°C anywhere on Earth, as it's never pure water, with never an homogeneous freezing point.

It is repeatable, it's not very arbitrary, but "intuitive" doesn't apply in any way.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago

You must be at altitude. That definitely makes a difference for the boiling point, but of course water freezes at 0. Impurities that you'll encounter in tap water, for example, will not have a large effect on freezing point.

Even if it was different by a few degrees, how does that make the scale any less intuitive?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Differences are neglegtable. 96°C is still going to kill you.