What difference does it make if it's a "system" or not?

For arguing that a one unit increment on the thermostat is so much easier than a 0.5 unit increment it makes no difference, so have at it.

 

Pointless argument. Fahrenheit is exactly the same as Celsius.

At -40°.

 

For arguing that a one unit increment on the thermostat is so much easier than a 0.5 unit increment it makes no difference, so have at it.

Again, a statement that makes little sense.
But thanks for giving me your permission to "have at it".
I will.

 

The US (semi)Officially metrified back in 1975. But! Because of the Society of Automotive Engineers Standards and that all of the US tooling was based on SAE stds. it was far too costly to fully implement the Metric Standard and hence, here we are doing science in metric and building in SAE Imperial still today.

 

The US (semi)Officially metrified back in 1975. But! Because of the Society of Automotive Engineers Standards and that all of the US tooling was based on SAE stds. it was far too costly to fully implement the Metric Standard and hence, here we are doing science in metric and building in SAE Imperial still today.

Also because few here wanted to change from miles to kilometers, gallons to liters, and inches to centimeters.

We possibly could have lived with yards to meters, but somehow saying the ball is on the 50 meter line in American Football wouldn't have the same ring as being on the 50 yard line.
And running the 4-minute mile sounds more interesting than running the 4-minute 1.61km.
Of course the long ton is very close to the metric ton (tonne) in weight so that's a minor change.

Incidentally some Imperial measurements are different from the USA measurements for the same measurement name (e.g. the pint and gallon are significantly different).

 

I have a curiosity about using the Celsius temperature scale versus Fahrenheit.
I know the USA is likely considered somewhat backwards for still using the Fahrenheit temperature scale for non-technical uses, (most science/technical functions use Celsius) but I find the scale more relatable to human comfort for ambient temperature readings.
0°F is really cold and 100°F is uncomfortably hot with 70°F being in the comfortable indoor range.
And 1°F is a good adjustment increment for an indoor thermostat.

I would suppose you get used to the Celsius temperature values for those arbitrary comfort levels, but it seems less intuitive.
Also I believe Celsius home thermostats use 0.5°C setting increments as a 1°C jump is likely too coarse.

I'm interested in thoughts on this from those in the rest of the world who use Celsius for ambient temperature readings.

On a side note, I also find the gallon a handy unit for liquid measure such as gasoline and milk.
I could live with kilometers instead of miles though, even though the word has too many syllables.

I believe it is matter of pure and simple habit.

Since I, as a cadet in the Naval Academy, had to become familiar to the units of use in navigation like fathoms, yards, sea miles, cables, feet, cufeet, inches, knots, since the beginning, never had interest on what would be dealing with their eventual counterparts. When I was already a seasoned Ch. Officer I had the idea of calculating the equivalence of our speed (bulk carrier in open sea) that is, 13 knots. Depressing result: 24 Km/hr!!

In tankers we had to deal °F or °C; the capacity of tanks used tables in units as selected by the yard where the vessel was built... but the final figure, actual quantity of cargo delivered to the terminal, had to be given in Kg!!.

Regarding comfort, I doubt mere mortals will think of how much actually is half of a degree, knowing that nowadays most of people read temperature on their mobile not in a thermometer. Maybe engineers as you, still do.

The most relevant change I recall was when the British Admiralty changed to metric and soon we started to have all new buildings (launched ships) with draft marks in meters.

A tall man like me, measures 1,59 m and BTW at home, after three days of a stable temperature of 18°C, I can expect to see some roaches showing up.

 

No, No, No, far from it!!! Both are based on the physical properties of Water!

From the freezing point of H20 (@ Std Pressure) the range is the same but scaled differently to the boiling point of H20 (@ Std Pressure). 100° for Celsius and 180° for Imperial. So each degrees Celsius is 1.8 degrees Imperial. So its a simple 1.8 factor + 32 degrees to convert Celsius to Imperial (since water freezes @ 32° Imperial). Can closely approximate in my head... Even if you can't remember all the other scaling factors you should remember this pretty easily and is how I taught it in my science classes to high school students. Either that or live somewhere that uses Celsius and you will soon understand just how hot or cold it really is...

Uh... what does it mean to be at the freezing point (32°F) and the boiling point (212°F) at STP (which is, by definition, a fixed temperature)?

Also, which "STP"? -- there are quite few of them.

The tie of Fahrenheit to water is incidental and became strict only as a later refinement as standards developed.

The story that many people hear, including myself, is that Fahrenheit wanted to create a temperature scale that was relatable to everyday people in their everyday lives, so he built a mercury bulb thermometer and made marks on it over the course of a year trying to capture the coldest and hottest temperatures in Paris. At the end of a year, he called the lowest temperature 0° and the hottest temperature 100°. Thus, the temperatures experienced by people would almost always fall between the two and 100 divisions seemed like a good choice for making a 1° increment useful in most daily situations.

It sounds nice, and superficially very plausible, but it is entirely bogus.

First, the temperatures in Paris barely extend beyond those limits on an all-time basis and never come particularly close to hitting them both in the same year (1947 appears to be the closest). In Fahrenheit's time the highs, in particular, were consistently lower due to industrialization and heat island effects. But good records don't exist all the way back to the early 1700s when he did his work, so while it is highly unlikely that this was what he did, it is not completely ruled out.

But Fahrenheit never made any such claim or implication. Furthermore, it's simply not what he actually did.

It is a myth that was created out of whole cloth by educators, apparently in mid-1800s American school primers, to give school children a simple explanation that was easy to relate to and, hence, remember. This is, sadly, very common in school material and this time frame, and going forward for about a century, seemed have adopted it as a pretty standard practice. Like LLMs today, the story was repeated frequently enough in educational materials (the Internet of the day) that even encyclopedias started including it as historical fact (embedded in the LLM's training set).

What he actually did was to find a temperature reference that was reasonably reproducible and settled on a brine mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride and defined this as 0°F (what he called "0 degrees"). He then set about finding another reference point that would let instrument makers manufacture thermometers that were sufficiently accurate over useful ranges. The first of these was the melting point of water (at ambient pressure). This would have been technically sufficient to create a linear scale, but it's unlikely he would have arbitrarily decided to call this "32 degrees". Instead, he recognized that if an instrument maker used these two points that it was highly likely that the accuracy at higher temperatures would suffer significantly. So he wanted a relatively high temperature that could be reasonably reproduced by an instrument maker. He decided on using human body temperature and made many measurements to find an average and used that is his third point. He then started playing around with the relative spacing between the marks trying to find a linear scale that would be easy for an instrument maker to reproduce. Since dividing distances by two is one of the easiest things for an instrument maker to do, he realized that defining the freezing point of water as 32 degrees (2^5) places the body temperature extremely close to 96 degrees, which put the distance between the upper two reference marks at 64 degrees (2^6). That his determination of human body temperature is a couple degrees low was likely due to the fact that he was measuring either the person's mouth or armpit. The armpit tends to be 1°F to 2°F cooler than the mouth, while the mouth tends to be about 0.5°F to 1°F cooler than the core. But this is really not an issue because the instrument maker would be making their reference measurements in a similar way.

As with nearly all other early measurement systems, as the need for standardization across large regions, driven primarily by commerce in the early days, definitions were changed but written to keep the scales as close to the prior values as possible to minimize the disruption. As industrialization and, later, scientific examination, required greater and greater levels of accuracy, precision, and reproducibility in construction, these definitions were changed repeatedly and that process is still happening today, though now the SI system has finally redefined all of the base units of measure in terms of fundamental physical constants that are reproducible in a suitable metrology lab. The last prototype standard, the kilogram, was retired in 2019, just seven years ago. If we were to start from scratch, but knowing that we could use these constants as our base definitions, our units would be much different in size than they are today. But because of the need/desire/politics of minimizing the impact of redefinitions, we end up with things like the elementary charge of an atom being exactly 1.602176634e-19 coulomb. If we wanted 1 C to be something akin to what it is currently, we would likely have defined an electronic charge to be 1e-20 C.

 

How does that affect whether you use Celsius or Fahrenheit, which are given in the same number system for Spanish and English?

I see it as a language that uses different terms to describe the same data point.

 

I see it as a language that uses different terms to describe the same data point.

Don't see how that is pertinent to this discussion about the use of Fahrenheit versus Celsius temperature scales.

Are you an internet troll?

 

Don't see how that is pertinent to this discussion about the use of Fahrenheit versus Celsius temperature scales.

Are you an internet troll?

I'm pretty sure I see his point and it's not unreasonable.

Just like Americans like the term 'soccer' while the rest of the world likes 'football', it is a matter primarily not of which term is better, but which term you grew up with, are exposed to more often, and use most often. We (Americans) like the Fehrenheit scale not because it has any particular advantage over Celsius, but because it is what we grew up with and what we think in terms of. When we point to its "conveniences" we are essentially cherry picking data points that we have grown accustomed to and emphasize those as being advantages. But the people that grew up with Celsius can (and do) the exact same thing.

 

I used Celsius for 40+ years in my engineering career, but it never felt particularly intuitive.

Oh but it's very intuitive ... 0°C is frozen water, and 100°C is boiling water ... it's far easier to relate in one's own daily experience

 

it's far easier to relate in one's own daily experience

Not for me or to mine.
My ambient temperature experience is limited to at least 60°C below 100°C.
But to each his own.

 

I'm pretty sure I see his point and it's not unreasonable.

Sorry but I think referring to Fahrenheit and Celsius as different languages is a reach.

we are essentially cherry picking data points that we have grown accustomed to and emphasize those as being advantages. But the people that grew up with Celsius can (and do) the exact same thing.

Okay.
That's what I waiting to hear about, and I haven't really heard much yet, other than its convenient/nice that 0°C is the freezing point of water and 100°C is its boiling point.

 

But to each his own.

Quite. It just reduces to - whatever you have become used to seems to be correct. Not very deep.

Imperial measurements are usually more attuned to everyday human experience due to their informal genesis, but in the modern world of science and engineering metric standards are winning. I love engineering mode on my HP, powers of three everywhere, and outside the USA it applies to everything, even in everyday life.

 

But to each his own.

Yeap ... for one's ordinary life, it's a matter of taste and practicality. But a team needs to convene into a single language before getting to work in any project. And for that purpose metric is the most robust system there is.

 

I watch videos of guys in their workshop, building a set of drawers or some such:

"The final width is going to be twenty-four and 13/16, but the runners are 3/8 and I need another 7/16 for this, but take off 5/8 because... therefore the size is..."

How can people live in that world?

 

Life can thrive in the most hostile of environments indeed ...

 

But a team needs to convene into a single language before getting to work in any project. And for that purpose metric is the most robust system there is.

True.
But that's not really particularly pertinent to my inquiry as stated in my first post.

 

True.
But that's not really particularly pertinent to my inquiry as stated in my first post.

I think it's quite relevant. You are doing exactly what I described. You are picking aspects of what you like about Fahrenheit.

1) 0°F is really cold and 100°F is uncomfortably hot with 70°F being in the comfortable indoor range.
2) And 1°F is a good adjustment increment for an indoor thermostat.

The first is purely because those are the associations you have made based on you growing up and using that particular scale.
A person that grew up with Celsius would simply say that 0°C is uncomfortably cold and 40°C is really hot, with 20°C to 25°C being a comfortable indoor range.

The second is a prime example of the cherry picking I was referring to.
A person that grew up with Celsius would simply point out that knowing if the temperature is positive or negative tells them whether they need to be concerned about things freezing.

 

True.
But that's not really particularly pertinent to my inquiry as stated in my first post.

Just when I was beginning to have fun ... *sigh*

Back to topic then:

1. You're right about Celsius being a bit too coarse for home thermostats. So yes, increments of 0.5C is the one most thermostats use. Even my Audi A4 2007 (it's an old car, but it's in perfect condition) has it set that way.
2. Kilometer has only one syllable in it: km ...