The Best/Worst Highway Innovations Of Each Decade...

[getemngo]

I've heard a couple different things. What you quoted from my first post was apparently a change that came later and not something that Fahrenheit himself did.

Wikipedia does agree about the coldest mix being 0 (which I said in my last post), but it also claims that he planned for the freezing point of liquid water to be 32 and human body temperature to be 96, so the difference between them would be 64, a power of 2, and it would be easier for him to mark his instruments.

But like you, I've also heard before that human body temperature was originally supposed to be 100. 

[vdeane]

Looks like Fahrenheit is based on the Romer scale, in which water freezes at 7.5.  Fahrenheit multiplied the Romer temperatures by 4 to eliminate fractions and recalibrated a few things so that water would freeze at an integer and to make it easier to mark instruments.  Thus, it was designed for scientific purposes, with little thought on general public use (after all, what's so hard about memorizing that water freezes at 32 degrees when you already have to memorize so much else?).

[Brandon]

Customary is much more natural for doing tasks (as many units designed for specific tasks, hence the odd factors) and comparison, metric is deliberately arbitrary and not tethered to the real world. As such, customary has harder numbers for conversion but metric has harder number for measurement and estimation.

+1

There's really no point to using feet (or any other smaller unit) if you are driving other than miles and fractions thereof.  Ditto with buying/selling land.  Acres are fine at one scale (farms, lots), and square footage at another (commercial buildings, houses).

Hell, we use different names for money even if it is decimalized: penny, nickle, dime, quarter, not centi-dollar or deci-dollar.

And Celsius is most definitely tethered to the real world. One of the reasons I've heard for Fahrenheit's invention is that the difference between freezing and boiling is exactly 180 degrees, and that's "useful" because 180 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, etc. When on earth is that important!?

It's those factors that, IMHO, make Imperial/Customary so much more useful than the so-called SI.

10 only has factors of 1, 2, and 5 and their multiples.  Try dividing 10 or any power of it (100, 1000, etc) by any other prime number?  You cannot possibly do so without a small fraction left over.  That's why 180 is a far better number for this.

We get too focused on making things far too "rational" by base 10 without realizing there may be a better base number than 10 to use.  Should we use metric time instead of the base 6 system we have that fits the moon and sun cycles better?

Or, for that matter, the French Republican Calendar?

[Pete from Boston]

Customary is much more natural for doing tasks (as many units designed for specific tasks, hence the odd factors) and comparison, metric is deliberately arbitrary and not tethered to the real world. As such, customary has harder numbers for conversion but metric has harder number for measurement and estimation.

+1

There's really no point to using feet (or any other smaller unit) if you are driving other than miles and fractions thereof.  Ditto with buying/selling land.  Acres are fine at one scale (farms, lots), and square footage at another (commercial buildings, houses).

Hell, we use different names for money even if it is decimalized: penny, nickle, dime, quarter, not centi-dollar or deci-dollar.

And Celsius is most definitely tethered to the real world. One of the reasons I've heard for Fahrenheit's invention is that the difference between freezing and boiling is exactly 180 degrees, and that's "useful" because 180 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, etc. When on earth is that important!?

It's those factors that, IMHO, make Imperial/Customary so much more useful than the so-called SI.

10 only has factors of 1, 2, and 5 and their multiples.  Try dividing 10 or any power of it (100, 1000, etc) by any other prime number?  You cannot possibly do so without a small fraction left over.  That's why 180 is a far better number for this.

We get too focused on making things far too "rational" by base 10 without realizing there may be a better base number than 10 to use.  Should we use metric time instead of the base 6 system we have that fits the moon and sun cycles better?

Or, for that matter, the French Republican Calendar?

If 10 is a useful number for you, metric is great.  But while 10 is easy, it is not always the most useful.  If you ever do any construction, 96" is the standard length in inches of many materials, and divides evenly by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 32, 48, and 96.  100 only divides by the whole numbers 1, 2, 4, 5, 25, and 50.  I've noticed hardware stores in Canada still sell everything by the inch.  I wonder if this is why.

[hotdogPi]

100 only divides by the whole numbers 1, 2, 4, 5, 25, and 50.

What about 10 and 20?

[Pete from Boston]

100 only divides by the whole numbers 1, 2, 4, 5, 25, and 50.

What about 10 and 20?

Fine, be picky. 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25, and 50.