Metrication

[GaryV]

I think that all values with decimals, and all 24-hour clock times are "additive" (dropping decimals/minutes rather than rounding them): like if the temperature is 12.9 degrees, it is "12 degrees" despite being rounded to 13. As well as clock time 16:59 means that it is "16".

So you are saying you ignore basic concepts of math and physics. Sure, go right ahead.

[TXtoNJ]

I typically don't see Celsius being subdivided.

Most digital household and car thermostats I've seen allow for half-degree increments on the Celsius scale, which are approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit, since that's about the threshold of humans' ability to notice temperature differences, although I'm sure there are exceptions.

Yes, my car measures to 0.5 C increments, likely since this is close to 1 F increments.

Perhaps the best system would be something with a zero-point matching that of Celsius but with smaller units.  Honestly, just shifting the existing Fahrenheit scale by 32 degrees would be worlds better.  Or use the existing Celsius zero-point but shrink the size of a degree in half;  this would make the 100°C equivalent to actual 122°F, which is a decent upper bound to normal summertime temperatures in a lot of the world.

This is an interesting idea. I personally find 1 degree C increments sufficient, but I could get used to that system and I know some users are adamant that the smaller Fahrenheit increments are necessary.

I think that all values with decimals, and all 24-hour clock times are "additive" (dropping decimals/minutes rather than rounding them): like if the temperature is 12.9 degrees, it is "12 degrees" despite being rounded to 13. As well as clock time 16:59 means that it is "16".

I know I won't get a real answer, but why?

The half-degrees would likely go away once US preferences are no longer taken into account for control systems.

Also, these are literally conversations that only happen in English (with some Spanish). Hardly anyone else in the world thinks Celsius is anything short of completely intuitive.

[kphoger]

Perhaps the best system would be something with a zero-point matching that of Celsius but with smaller units.  Honestly, just shifting the existing Fahrenheit scale by 32 degrees would be worlds better.  Or use the existing Celsius zero-point but shrink the size of a degree in half;  this would make the 100°C equivalent to actual 122°F, which is a decent upper bound to normal summertime temperatures in a lot of the world.

This is an interesting idea. I personally find 1 degree C increments sufficient, but I could get used to that system and I know some users are adamant that the smaller Fahrenheit increments are necessary.

Here's how each system would work out:

[Brandon]

I think that all values with decimals, and all 24-hour clock times are "additive" (dropping decimals/minutes rather than rounding them): like if the temperature is 12.9 degrees, it is "12 degrees" despite being rounded to 13. As well as clock time 16:59 means that it is "16".

You mean 4:59 pm.

[kphoger]

You mean 4:59 pm.

For what it's worth...  I've had my cell phone clock set to 24-hour display for years.  I glance at it, read "18:04", and say "six o four" in my mind.  It's so completely second-nature to me by now, that I had to check my phone just now to make sure it even is set to 24-hour display.

[Big John]

At long as you are not using the French Revolutionary clock.

[Scott5114]

One nice thing about Fahrenheit's 0 point is that it means the vast majority of the time the numbers will be positive. I can remember exactly once in my life the outdoor temperature was below 0, which made it remarkable enough I specifically went outside to go see what it was like. (It was cold. Now to go to Furnace Creek in the summer to experience it being hot.)

[kalvado]

I typically don't see Celsius being subdivided.

Most digital household and car thermostats I've seen allow for half-degree increments on the Celsius scale, which are approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit, since that's about the threshold of humans' ability to notice temperature differences, although I'm sure there are exceptions.

What's the make of your car?

[kphoger]

One nice thing about Fahrenheit's 0 point is that it means the vast majority of the time the numbers will be positive. I can remember exactly once in my life the outdoor temperature was below 0, which made it remarkable enough I specifically went outside to go see what it was like. (It was cold. Now to go to Furnace Creek in the summer to experience it being hot.)

Seriously?  It gets below 0°F at least once a year up here in Wichita.

[Scott5114]

One nice thing about Fahrenheit's 0 point is that it means the vast majority of the time the numbers will be positive. I can remember exactly once in my life the outdoor temperature was below 0, which made it remarkable enough I specifically went outside to go see what it was like. (It was cold. Now to go to Furnace Creek in the summer to experience it being hot.)

Seriously?  It gets below 0°F at least once a year up here in Wichita.

Usually the lowest it gets here is in the upper single digits.

[MikeTheActuary]

Canada in a nutshell:

I'm in Toronto for meetings.

I was distracted during one of them because I noticed that the thermostat in that room was showing the temperature as 75 degrees....

[mgk920]

The half-degrees would likely go away once US preferences are no longer taken into account for control systems.

Also, these are literally conversations that only happen in English (with some Spanish). Hardly anyone else in the world thinks Celsius is anything short of completely intuitive.

The 'water freezes at zero and (at sea level) boils at 100' thing in Celsius is so very intuitive that I had it figured out well BEFORE we got into weights and measures  when I was in early grade school.  I'll spare any further details as I have mentioned them in here many times before over the years.

Mike

[1995hoo]

At long as you are not using the French Revolutionary clock.

I have an app that converts the date and time to said system.

You mean 4:59 pm.

For what it's worth...  I've had my cell phone clock set to 24-hour display for years.  I glance at it, read "18:04", and say "six o four" in my mind.  It's so completely second-nature to me by now, that I had to check my phone just now to make sure it even is set to 24-hour display.

I have as well. Not just my phone—my iPad and laptop as well. Part of that is because when I had to track billable hours, using the 24-hour clock was much easier, and now I'm just plain used to it that way. The office issued me a new laptop this week and changing the clock display to 24-hour (and the date display to year-month-day) was one of the first things I changed.

[kkt]

One thing that I would love to see being metricated in the US is the weather. Celsius is superior to Fahrenheit, and Celsius uses decimals, what Fahrenheit does not use so often to indicate temperature values.

If Celsius uses decimals more often, then that should speak to its inferiority, not its superiority.  A unit that tends to get subdivided is proving itself to be less than ideal as a unit of measurement.

The problem is that each has its advantages.  I don't suppose anyone on here would argue that Fahrenheit has a superior zero-point than Celsius:  it's basically useless to have your frame of reference be one particular brine solution in an 18th-Century European physicist's laboratory.  But Fahrenheit has the advantage of having smaller units without those units being too small to make a meaningful difference.  (I, for example, can tell the difference in room temperature when the thermostat is adjusted by just one degree Fahrenheit.)

Perhaps the best system would be something with a zero-point matching that of Celsius but with smaller units.  Honestly, just shifting the existing Fahrenheit scale by 32 degrees would be worlds better.  Or use the existing Celsius zero-point but shrink the size of a degree in half;  this would make the 100°C equivalent to actual 122°F, which is a decent upper bound to normal summertime temperatures in a lot of the world.

I think that all values with decimals, and all 24-hour clock times are "additive" (dropping decimals/minutes rather than rounding them): like if the temperature is 12.9 degrees, it is "12 degrees" despite being rounded to 13. As well as clock time 16:59 means that it is "16".

Good luck catching your flights.

[Rothman]

One nice thing about Fahrenheit's 0 point is that it means the vast majority of the time the numbers will be positive. I can remember exactly once in my life the outdoor temperature was below 0, which made it remarkable enough I specifically went outside to go see what it was like. (It was cold. Now to go to Furnace Creek in the summer to experience it being hot.)

Seriously?  It gets below 0°F at least once a year up here in Wichita.

Once a year, you say?  Well, that throws Scott's entire preference out the window.  Shame on Scott.  Shame!

[freebrickproductions]

Honestly, I wouldn't be against making a Fahrenheit-based temperature scale that has the zero set to the freezing point of water. 100°C being the boiling point of water in Celsius is way too handy of a measurement to throw-out by adjusting the scale of the degrees.

Regardless, whatever new measurements are created, they'd probably require a new name, to avoid any confusion with the already-printed °C, °F, °K, etc. temperatures. Plus, not to mention the time it'd take to get appliances, vehicles, thermostats, computers, and other things updated to accept the new temperature scale(s)...

[US 89]

I think that all values with decimals, and all 24-hour clock times are "additive" (dropping decimals/minutes rather than rounding them): like if the temperature is 12.9 degrees, it is "12 degrees" despite being rounded to 13. As well as clock time 16:59 means that it is "16".

Most of the things you post on here are opinions that you can't really defend other than "I think it should be this way", but this one goes beyond that. This is not an opinion - it is, quite simply, wrong.

[Road Hog]

I spent a lot of my formative years in Deutschland where "zwanzig Grad" was comfortable and "fünfunddreissig Grad" was bloody hot. Today, 95ºF in July/August in Texas is a blessing.

[Poiponen13]

I think that all values with decimals, and all 24-hour clock times are "additive" (dropping decimals/minutes rather than rounding them): like if the temperature is 12.9 degrees, it is "12 degrees" despite being rounded to 13. As well as clock time 16:59 means that it is "16".

Most of the things you post on here are opinions that you can't really defend other than "I think it should be this way", but this one goes beyond that. This is not an opinion - it is, quite simply, wrong.

I like to track sunrise and sunset times from various sites e.g. timeanddate.com. I group days by the hour numbers of sunrise and sunset times. For example. in New York, the today's sunrise is "at 7" and sunset "at 16" when they are really at 7:12 and 16:29. The "7 period" of sunrises is when sun rises between 7:00 and 8:00, and in NY it lasts from December 1 to February 7. It is both preceded and followed by "6 period". Conversely, the "16 period" is when sun sets between 16:00 and 17:00 , and it runs from November 5 (end of DST) to January 21, after which comes "17 period".

[Poiponen13]

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[kphoger]

The 'water freezes at zero and (at sea level) boils at 100' thing in Celsius is so very intuitive that I had it figured out well BEFORE we got into weights and measures when I was in early grade school.

Here's the thing, though:  knowing the freezing point of water has everyday real-world application, whereas knowing the boiling point of water does not.  I never have any reason at all to know that water boils at 212°F.  Ergo, "the 'water freezes at zero and (at sea level) boils at 100' thing in Celsius" only matters to me in its first part, not in its second part.  To me, having a unit that provides greater accuracy without being absurdly small (which Fahrenheit does) is more important than having 100°—or any other nice round number, for that matter—be the boiling point of water.

One nice thing about Fahrenheit's 0 point is that it means the vast majority of the time the numbers will be positive. I can remember exactly once in my life the outdoor temperature was below 0, which made it remarkable enough I specifically went outside to go see what it was like. (It was cold. Now to go to Furnace Creek in the summer to experience it being hot.)

Seriously?  It gets below 0°F at least once a year up here in Wichita.

Once a year, you say?  Well, that throws Scott's entire preference out the window.  Shame on Scott.  Shame!

"At least" being an important qualifier, but point taken.  However, considering I live in the country's middle state, I assume that a whole heck of a lot of America sees sub-zero temperatures more often than I do;  this, in my opinion, diminishes the appeal of Fahrenheit's having mostly positive numbers for air temperature.

[Scott5114]

"At least" being an important qualifier, but point taken.  However, considering I live in the country's middle state, I assume that a whole heck of a lot of America sees sub-zero temperatures more often than I do;  this, in my opinion, diminishes the appeal of Fahrenheit's having mostly positive numbers for air temperature.

It really doesn't—most Americans live close enough to an ocean to have their temperature moderated by it enough to not experience such low temperatures. (Remember, if you pick ten Americans at random, at least one is statistically likely to be a Californian.) "Temperatures below 0°F" is really a phenomenon that happens primarily in the north-central part of the country, which isn't very densely populated outside of Minneapolis.

I would also submit that temperatures below 0°F probably occur with far less frequency than temperatures 1–32°F, even if you account for land area rather than population.

[Scott5114]

Here's a really stupid temperature scale—Fahrenheit but with the zero point at 72°, because I saw an HVAC commercial once where that was treated as "room temperature". We'll call it "degrees nice" because 72° is pretty nice. So negative numbers are always cold and positive numbers are always hot. It tells you nothing about the freezing or boiling point of anything, although the freezing point of water would be –40°n (note lowercase n to distinguish from degrees north), and boiling would be 140°n, which are nice round numbers.

Right now the temperature in Norman is 57°, which is –15°n. Meaning it's fifteen degrees colder than being nice. I sort of like this temperature scale...

[J N Winkler]

From the Wikipedia article on the Fahrenheit scale:

According to a German story, Fahrenheit actually chose the lowest air temperature measured in his hometown Danzig (Gdańsk, Poland) in winter 1708–09 as 0 °F, and only later had the need to be able to make this value reproducible using brine.

The larger context is that Fahrenheit developed the scale during the middle of the coldest period in the Little Ice Age, but in a continent where thermohaline circulation tends to moderate temperatures at high latitudes.  I suspect the zero point landed where it did because there was little immediate expectation of needing to measure ambient temperatures colder than it.

[vdeane]

Here's a really stupid temperature scale—Fahrenheit but with the zero point at 72°, because I saw an HVAC commercial once where that was treated as "room temperature". We'll call it "degrees nice" because 72° is pretty nice. So negative numbers are always cold and positive numbers are always hot. It tells you nothing about the freezing or boiling point of anything, although the freezing point of water would be –40°n (note lowercase n to distinguish from degrees north), and boiling would be 140°n, which are nice round numbers.

Right now the temperature in Norman is 57°, which is –15°n. Meaning it's fifteen degrees colder than being nice. I sort of like this temperature scale...

Funny, I was thinking something similar.  There must be something to this "72 is nice" thing...