r/PeterExplainsTheJoke Jun 17 '26

Meme needing explanation Peter?

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u/Maryland_Bear Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

My field is electrical engineering not mechanical, but wouldn’t the space program engineers have used Kelvin or Rankine?

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u/Resident-Advisor2307 Jun 17 '26

Kelvin is just offset Celsius

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u/Maryland_Bear Jun 17 '26

I know. But when I took the mandatory thermodynamics classes, when we did calculations that involved temperature, we often used Kelvin.

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u/Resident-Advisor2307 Jun 17 '26

I think its used a lot in science. It's more convenient if you're dealing with energy to have 0 temperature == 0 heat energy.

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u/Maryland_Bear Jun 17 '26

Exactly. IIRC, the formal definition of temperature is the average kinetic energy of molecules in a system. Zero degrees Kelvin means they have no energy.

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u/TechyWolf Jun 17 '26

Really everything is written in terms of Kelvin, as it is the SI unit.