• aproposnix@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I’m originally from the US. Since living in Europe, I can’t believe how much easier the metric system is. I can not convert between the two so I dropped imperial. The only time I deal with it is when I call family in the states.

    I do recall, when I was a kid, they tried to convert the US to metric, but it failed miserably.

    • sibachian@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      they didn’t really try. it’s more of a suggestion (and still is). metric is standard in the US within science, just not among regular folks because commercially it’s not as dramatic, i.e. news stations dramatize 100F!!! since it sounds way more dramatic than 38°C. if the news and commercial products started using metric, people would quickly switch over.

      unfortunately a lot of imperial shit has started migrating to europe due to chinese products being produced for the US market and then sold in europe as an afterthought using imperial units.

  • roulettebreaker@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I had once heard described that fahrenheit’s best feature is that you can go “oh, 1-100, ‘sheesh, that’s really cold!’ to ‘hoof, that’s pretty hot!’” and yeah, while I was in the US where most temperatures (RIP Florida) change all the time, that sure was convenient.

    However, living in a country that always stays in the 80-100 range, the ‘oh fuck, the water’s freezingto 'oh fuck, the heat death of the sun is upon us’ range is a MUCH more useful scale to knowing if we’ve been struck by some sort of apocalyptic event today

  • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    F is kinda nice for weather as a scale of 1 to 100 of really cold feeling to really hot feeling. But for anything scientific or calibration related, C is great

    • kat@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Disagree. Celsius is super helpful for determining if it’s gonna snow or not, a key weather thing where I live. Humid and cold and below 0? Snow. Humid and cold and above 0? Rain or freezing rain.

      Also helps with plants. Below 0? Frost.

      I’d argue you can’t get more intuitive than 0 is cold, below 0 is very cold. Celsius also plays nice with round numbers, every 5 or 10 degrees is a change in feeling. 0 is cold, 5 out is cooler, 10 out is cool, 15 is moderate, 20 is comfortable, 25 is room and warm, 30 is hot, 35+ is very hot. Every ten degrees we’re doing big changes. 0 is frozen, 10 is cool, 20 is comfortable, 30 is hot. 32 being frozen doesn’t feel as intuitive.

  • moneygrowsontrees@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I like to refer to them as Freedom units and Communist units (in jest, obviously). I will say, though, that Fahrenheit feels like a more precise scale for measuring temperature even if the units are goofy.

    • kilmister@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      What additional arguments besides personal experience would you give to back this precision claim?

      Temperature scales are arbitrary by nature, and the criteria behind their definition can be useful or not. Fahrenheit’s isn’t that much useful compared to Celsius’ or Kelvin’s.

      • moneygrowsontrees@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I’m not arguing on Fahrenheit’s behalf or saying it IS more precise. I just said it “feels” more precise because you have finer increments in whole numbers. 70 degrees F is about 21 degrees C while 90 degrees F is about 32 degrees. 20 degrees of increment in F versus 12 in C which feels more precise. It’s the same way metric length measurements feel more precise because there are whole number millimeters rather than fractional inches.

        I have no strong opinion any one way, other than I feel like everyone should endeavor to be comfortable converting between various systems of measurement.

        • Virkkunen@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          You can simply use as many decimals you want to make Celsius more precise. You don’t see it used in general because it really isn’t needed.

          • ddh@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            The little digital thermometers I have around the house read to one decimal place. The precision argument is just bizarre.

    • desttinghim@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Fahrenheit’s 0 is the freezing point of water - salt water that is. Not that I think it’s better, just that there was some thought put into it.

      • Creat@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        There is no freezing point of salt water. Cause water can have a very small or very large amount of salt in it. There isn’t even a “default” amount of salt that’s just assumed.

      • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        It… isn’t. That would change wildly depending on which sea/ocean you get your saltwater from (more salt = colder freezing point).

        It really is defined relative to a very specific brine mixture (in the most scientifically generous origin story - some say he literally just measured the coldest winter day he could). Well except it isn’t anyway, because like all US units nowadays it’s defined against metric units (namely the Kelvin, just like 0°C is actually defined to be 273.15 K).