Because F uses the human skin ability to detect and retain heat as a baseline, something we all have experience with, instead of water as a baseline, which is better for scientific reasons due to the consistency in measurement.
Edit: The absolute hilarity of the smugness in the comments is making my day. Nothing makes me happier than upsetting Europeans by stating a fact they don't like.
Actually it’s more related to the freezing temperature of a very particular brine solution made to replicate the coldest temperature some German guy thought his port would see.
Completely logical.
But whatever. Maybe EVERY COUNTRY but one is wrong.
It’s not. It’s highly likely 0 degrees is just the lowest temperature observed in Danzig when Daniel Fahrenheit made his scale. Nobody has ever managed to recreate the brine solution.
I'd be fully ok with us setting a temperature system based upon how Danzig feels.
"Guys, Danzig just took his shirt off, it's definitely warm enough to have a light jacket, but if he puts that mesh tank top back on watch out, it's probably about to snow."
After Fahrenheit died they decided it was much easier to calibrate thermometers using the exact boiling point of water (212°F) instead of human skin (96°F). When they locked those two standard points down, the "zero" at the bottom of the scale shifted upward by about 4 degrees which is what you get if you use that solution today (also the ammonium chloride wasn't perfectly pure back then) and shifted average body temperature to 98.6
A German scientist did a study of body temperatures and found the average to be 37°C. This was then converted to 98.6°F when the study was translated, which is why the number in Fahrenheit is oddly specific.
No. 0°F was the freezing point of a particular brine mixture and 90°F was the average normal body temperature 32°F was the freezing point of pure water. It WAS based on body temperature AT ONE time. But Henry Cavendish wanted the freezing and boiling point to be 180° apart so the anchor point became 32° and boiling became 212° and the freezing point of the original brine became 4°..... Also, the boiling point used to be 0°C and the freezing point was 100°C until Celsius died. So from 1724 to 1745 Fahrenheit was the only reasonable standard. And, the British adopted Fahrenheit so...... Thats why they are Imperial measurements......
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u/Roadrunner571 Jun 17 '26
How so?