• 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.

    • dedale@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Change is hard. In Europe we wanted to drop daylight saving time, but nobody could agree on which hour to keep. So it’s here to stay. Sigh.

  • 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

    • 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).

  • Cisop Sixpence@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    I live in the United States and although I grew up here using Fahrenheit, I switched to Celsius almost 10 years ago. Part of my reason for switching was the rest of the world was using Celsius and every time they would mention the temperature, I had no clue if that was very hot, or just right and kept having to convert, so since there were not that many countries that used Fahrenheit, I switched. I still know what the comfortable range is in Fahrenheit, but now I also know in Celsius as I use it every day. Also, I no longer appear to be an old curmudgeon that is resistant to using a system the rest of the world already uses.

  • 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.

  • 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.

      • dominoko@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        The range for livable temperatures follows a more reasonable scale. Hot is really high numbers. Cold is low. The exact temperature is more precise because the range is larger.
        Celsius is fine for scientists but for the regular person Fahrenheit has a better range.
        Also I’m biased.

  • Lizardking27@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Fahrenheit is better for weather, and I’ll fight anyone about it.

    We use Celsius in the lab because it makes math easier, it’s great.

    But Fahrenheit is basically a 0-100 scale of how hot it is outside and that makes perfect sense for describing outside conditions relative to human sensory perception.

    • Ddhuud@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Fahrenheit is better for weather

      You’re just used to it. The rest of the world have 0 problems using it for weather.