Celsius versus Fahrenheit

Thread Starter

crutschow

Joined Mar 14, 2008
38,658
i solved that years ago by a little bit of cheating... bought identical thermostat, hacked it, then hacked the original as well. both were showing few degrees higher. i wanted second unit in case she claims that original is broken (and she did) so i casually pulled out brand new unit, unpacked and replaced it in front of her. ;)
Wouldn't work in my case.
We have a digital clock by the bed that also displays the ambient room temperature.
 
A few years ago I bought a wheelchair accessible Honda Odyssey for my 27 year old daughter ... We had to import it from Texas because the company that makes them does not have a representative here, and the companies that do make them here are no match for the quality offered in the US.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to see that changing its speed and distance units was as easy as going through a few clicks in a screen menu, and that's a feature that I use often. This because I have to travel to Texas at least every three months or so, and I no longer have to do conversions from miles to kilometers in my head whenever I visit my northernly neighbors.

BUT ... changing the air conditioning units from Fahrenheit to Celsius turned out to be an entirely different thing ... At first I thought that it was going to be as easy as selecting an option in a different menu. But after exploring all of the options in the screen interface, I simply could not find a solution.

And finally, after some Googling, I found a guy who posted that the easiest (and only) way to change the reported temperature from °F to °C was to remove the freaking dashboard, dislodge some obscure circuit, and change a couple of SMT resistors to a given value so as to force the computer into making a different temperature calculation ... and by the way, even though said hack was guaranteed to work, changing the temperature units symbol from °F to °C was simply not possible ...

That, is what I call lousy, lazy and mediocre engineering ...
 

Ian0

Joined Aug 7, 2020
13,211
Hi W,
I also grew up with Fahrenheit, but changed to Celsius for physics reasons, now I'm stuck with it. I also grew up with £.S.D.
I used to use lathes which had thousandths of an inch dials, and had to read drawings in MMs.

On the back of school exercise books were chains and furlong tables.

I'm glad it's more simple now!
C.
From my collection:
IMG_1406.jpeg
what about volume measure?
minim, fluid ounce, gill, pint, quart, gallon, peck, bushel, load?
 

atferrari

Joined Jan 6, 2004
5,019
The consensus seems to be that, whichever temperature scale you grew up with is the one that seems the best.
I can live with that (and I'm glad I grew up with Fahrenheit). :)
Habit is the point. When visiting England for the first time (1969), the old system with pounds, shillings, and pennies was in force. Local people seemed quite at ease with it, in spite of the perceived (by me) complexity.
 

schmitt trigger

Joined Jul 12, 2010
2,171
You need to add a password to your thermostat
Passwords can be broken. Better to use a biometric passkey.

BTW, air conditioner settings are also a contention area in our household. I tell her that our difference is that I posses a PID controller in my brain, and she only has an on/off switch with lots of hysteresis.............
 

schmitt trigger

Joined Jul 12, 2010
2,171
changing the temperature units symbol from °F to °C was simply not possible ...
My grandfather, who was an A/C distributor, told me a simple hack which one can simply do in your brain to convert from F to C easily.

Take the Farenheit temperature, let's say as an example 94 degrees F.
Sustract 32, becomes 62
Divide by 2, becomes 31
Add 10% (actually 11% but 10 is close enough) becomes 34.1 C, which is a close enough answer. The actual temperature conversion is 34.4C.

To go from C to F, you go backwards. let's say 21C
Substact 10% becomes 19
Multiply by 2, becomes 38.
Add 32 becomes 70F, which is a close enough answer to the actual 69.8 F.
 

Futurist

Joined Apr 8, 2025
924
From my collection:
View attachment 370355
what about volume measure?
minim, fluid ounce, gill, pint, quart, gallon, peck, bushel, load?
As you know a UK pint ins 20 floz, here in the US we can get a 16 floz pint or a 22 floz pint, so I like asking for a "large pint of" whatever when I go to a bar.

But these two floz units are (slightly) different volumes (why o why?) the US being a bit greater volume.
 
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