... it was funny to me....
- Thread starter Jef
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Fahrenheit is basically the range of "human can live here", which is why it makes the most sense for every-day life. Celsius is the range of "water can exist at atmospheric pressure at sea level", which is why it's useful for science (it's repeatable and testable). Kelvin tries to disambiguate even further by using a theoretical lower limit defined by physics ("absolute zero" is when all matter stops moving entirely), but to my knowledge, we've never actually created such conditions so we don't actually know if it's accurate or not.Well duh! No wonder we use Fahrenheit!(I kid, I kid!)
Notably, Fahrenheit is a finer scale between whole numbers than Celsius is, so it's actually useful for a lot of things like climate control. Decimal temperatures just aren't as elegant or easy to use as whole numbers.
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The Fahrenheit scale was developed in 1724 by physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. He based 0°F on the coldest temperature of an ice and salt brine and originally set 96°F to average human body temperature. Water freezing was later designated at 32°F and boiling at 212°F. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
The development was largely built upon the earlier scale devised by astronomer Ole Rømer. Rømer's scale had water freezing at 7.5° and body temperature at 22.5°. To avoid using inconvenient fractions, Fahrenheit multiplied those values by four, establishing 0° as his brine base, 32° as water freezing, and 96° as body
The development was largely built upon the earlier scale devised by astronomer Ole Rømer. Rømer's scale had water freezing at 7.5° and body temperature at 22.5°. To avoid using inconvenient fractions, Fahrenheit multiplied those values by four, establishing 0° as his brine base, 32° as water freezing, and 96° as body
It all became so much simpler when Dr Theodore Celsius invented a metric scale for temperature that was based on something vaguely logical and practical for normal people to understand in the real world... I think he went to the same school as Professor Farquhar Kilogram and they often enjoyed sinking pints of beer at the campus bar & grill.
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Decimalisation in the UK February 71 caused some serious confusion and some people still begrudge it saying we were ripped off. I am lucky in that I can work in both, including the screwed up Merican version. That we stayed imperial for many things such as roads and pints was a constant thorn in the side of Urupe much to our amusement , there is nothing more English than poking the French with a sharp stick, just for the fun of it.
, there is nothing more English than poking the French with a sharp stick, just for the fun of it.
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That's out of my depth, how about knots?How many fathoms in a furlong?
Don't even get me started about rods and chains.
-Uwe-
