this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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xkcd

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In my new scale, °X, 0 is Earths' record lowest surface temperature, 50 is the global average, and 100 is the record highest, with a linear scale between each point and adjustment every year as needed.

https://explainxkcd.com/3001/

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

I actually think a great compromise between c and f would be c x 2 so 200c is boiling point, all the benefits of c and f

[–] RandomVideos 11 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Why isnt the list ordered by cursedness?

Galen has by far the lowest score and real Celsius the highest

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Can we count 10/0 as a big number? Or even just as a number.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 15 hours ago

After joking about this at work, I landed on the most cursed scale I could think of... pT = log10 FPW.

Pros: no bottom to scale, increasing negative values asymptotically approach absolute zero. Water freezes at zero.

1 pT is almost exactly the melting point of iridium. Lightning bolts are around 2 pT. Boiling points of neon and helium are in the neighborhood of -1 and -2.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

I once read that circular thermometers were a thing and that's why fahrenheit has 180° between freezing and boiling.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 13 hours ago

I think a degree F was 1/10,000 of the volume of mercury he happened to use in his first thermometer. The 180 was probably a coincidence because bimetal spring thermometers came along later.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago

I've heard this too. It also allows for easily making your own thermometer, since you can just divide by 2 until you get all the way down to degrees.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Real Celsius 10/0 , Galen | 4/-4

Lmfao. Surprised there isn't one that is something like sqrt(-1)/10. Probably something to do with E&M lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago

You could totally make an extra cursed temperature scale. Randall proposed the °X scale, but maybe we can do better than that. That was pretty cursed because it defines three points based on statistics observed on of Earth and uses linear interpolation to connect the dots.

I propose an extra cursed system that uses completely fictional values. Let’s take -π as the melting point of unicorns and +GrahamsNumber as the peak temperature in the core of the hypothetical planet Vulcan. Between the two points you can fit any seventh degree polynomial you like in order to get the values that fit your needs. On Wednesdays you can use a sine wave too.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 22 hours ago

LOL, the original Celsius scale really is 10/0 cursed.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago

Non-linear temperature hurts my noggin

[–] [email protected] 18 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Mesuring temperature in radians: 3.14/π

[–] [email protected] 7 points 17 hours ago

Is that hot pie like on my grandma’s window sill? Or hot pie like where my grandma gave lap dances to put herself through law school?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

I am very surprised that Rankine gets such a high cursedness score. Isn't it just the same as Kelvin but based on Fahrenheit instead of Celsius?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, but if you have to convert from Fahrenheit to another scale anyways, why in the hell would you not just go straight to Kelvin?!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago

Converting between Kelvin and Celsius is simple addition; converting between Rankine and Fahrenheit is simple addition. Converting between the two groups requires multiplication, and pre calculator, that's notably harder.

Also, all your kJ/kg/°C or BTU/lb/°F tables and factors are identical when you swap to referencing absolute zero. If you change to the other unit system, all that goes out the window.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Because it implies you are using US Costumary/Imperial units for science or "fancy" engineering.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago

The other scores seem to be more about inherent cursedness, not simply 'there is a far better option'.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (4 children)

Yeah, well that’s a cultural thing really. Celcius and fahrenheit scales are both quite arbitrary. The kelvin scale uses absolute zero, which totally makes sense, but the other fixed point is pretty arbitrary when you think of it. The fahrenheit scale makes sense for the human experience of weather, while the celcius scale makes sense for generally life on Earth where water plays an important role. Neither of them are particularly universal, and they both suck in their unique ways.

see also: natural units

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 hours ago

The fahrenheit scale makes sense for the human experience of weather

Wat. Yanks keep saying this but... wat

[–] [email protected] 8 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Human experience in weather is arbitrary and that's just cope, celcius feels as much natural as fahrenheit, the only difference is what you learned as kid

[–] [email protected] 24 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Technically they arr arbitrary yes, but sometimes some arbitrary makes more sense than others. Why is fahrenheit 0 at -32°C? Accordinfmg to wikipedia he chose 0°F as the melting point of water and ammonium chloride (what percentage of solution?) and the highest was initially "the average of the hottest temperature of a healthy man". Do you see why this feels more arbitrady then " the melting and boiling point of water at 101.300 Pa"? Not only these points are constant and measurable, but water is such ubiqutous in human life that it feels at least less arbitrary as a reference point.

Historically, it was ok. Now it just doesn't make much sense, sincd we tried (and mostly succeded) to standardize measurements units for centuries (and make them all base 10)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

I don’t really use the Fahrenheit scale for anything, but when I bump into it, I prefer to think of those values as: 0°F is a cold winter and 100°F is a hot summer weather. Makes sense for the human experience, which makes it a very practical unit. The original definition was more technical than that, but it was also severely limited by the technology at the time, so it had some flaws.

You also have to look at these units in the proper historical context. Measurements were a complete mess, so having at least something that sort of makes some sense and is somewhat repeatable, is a clear improvement. Both, Fahrenheit and Celcius scales totally addressed those concerns, and that makes them both good enough. Absolute zero and plank temperature weren’t even known back then, so what can you expect.

When it comes to using these units in serious scientific and engineering applications, you run into problems, but the kelvin scale addresses those pretty well. It’s not exactly elegant, but at least it’s functional. Because of historical baggage, we’re pretty much stuck with these units, but it could be worse.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

0°F is a cold winter and 100°F is a hot summer

Makes sense for some specific location. But in general sense 0°F is not cold and 100°F is not hot.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

I agree, historically they make sense, but times have evolved and I honestlt believe certain things should belong to the past, just like we abandoned 12 base monetary and measurement systems, except for a single place on earth that just ignores what everyone else does and goes their own way.

In a global world, we should unite things instead of dividing for ideological/political reasons. Still, my own is an ideological reason why the imperial system should disappear, but there are pratical issues it causes, espeically when used internationally in industrial and scientific fields, which is very common.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 13 hours ago

I mean the imperial system has it's niche uses too. Fractional measurements are helpful if you're doing multiple of something and you don't want to calculate. What if you have 16 boards and you need to lay them out across 19 feet, what's the width for each board and gap? Well its 19/16 or 1-3/16. And you could say your tolerance is ±1/16. Versus a decimal system, you need to hit 1.1875, with a ±0.0625 tolerance. Yeah no, imperial is better in that case.

Bur imperial does have it's pains, especially once you start working with anything that isn't a multiple of 2. Just wanted to point out it does have some uses.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

I think a large portion of it is that governments/institutions/whatever don’t want to pay the large amount of money it would take to replace all signage/software/etc.

The classic “high short term costs for long term benefits” vs. “no (direct monetary) short term costs for ‘future me’ problems”.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

I think it’s about time we switched to using seconds as the universal time unit. I really hate the messy base 60 conversions we inherited from the Babylonians. Also, month is such a broken unit, and it just makes many calculations unnecessarily complicated.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

0 is an extremely cold winter. Like you're going to die very quickly if you're outside without extreme weather gear.

Where I'm at, mid east coast, we only have a few days each winter get below 20, which is already hellishly cold.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 12 hours ago

0 is an extremely cold winter

Lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

In the Middle East, the winters are brutally cold and the locals suffer. Tourists from colder regions come there to enjoy their winter vacation in December or January, because it’s paradoxically quite warm. They only pack their normal spring clothes because it isn’t really that cold in their opinion. You know, a thin coat, maybe a thin summer beanie. You’ll probably be ok without any mittens. Also, you can wear normal shoes which is nice.

Extreme weather gear is considered just normal winter clothes in some parts of the world.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 20 hours ago

Culturally speaking, it's pretty cursed to use some units that are specific to a country instead of the global standard for science. Extra cursed if it's for serious engineering (just ask NASA).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 22 hours ago

Fahrenheit stacks I guess

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I was positive that the Wedgwood scale had to be fictional but nope! That Josiah dude was WEIRD 😄

[–] [email protected] 9 points 19 hours ago

These scores a killing me

[–] [email protected] 4 points 17 hours ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I think that meme is older than the Fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago

I was pointing to the comments, not the post.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago

I wouldn't be surprised

[–] [email protected] 8 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Meanwhile me measuring temperature with scale of pain

[–] [email protected] 4 points 17 hours ago

It’s about 2.7x I’m not leaving the house today. If it drops down to like 2.5x I might go check the mail.