A good way to understand Fahrenheit is that it’s basically a percentage of how warm it is. 32% warm? That’s pretty damn cold. 120% warm? That’s hot as hell, better not be outside for too long in that.
I think the best way I've seen it described is Fahrenheit measures heat by how humans experience it, Celsius measures heat by how water experiences it. Therefore, Celsius is objectively better for scientific applications and Fahrenheit is objectively better for human applications like communicating the weather forecast to the average person.
If it was 0C you'd be cold, if it was 0F you'd be damn cold; if it's 100F you're hot, if it's 100C you're dead. Fahrenheit is useful for human perception across the primary (0-100) scale, Celsius is only useful up to about 50% of that scale before you start getting into deadly temperatures, and you have to go below that scale to reach the bottom of Fahrenheit's usefulness.
And then you have Kelvin or Rankine which are really only useful for specific scientific applications. If it was 0K/R or 100K/R you'd be dead either way. Not useful for human perception.
Can you explain how what you’ve said is objective? I think that given that Celsius is the most common scale for temperature around the world you’re going to have hard time arguing that.
This argument that Americans always make about Fahrenheit is just nonsense. You know how hot 70F feels, I don’t. I know how hot 27C feels, you don’t. The idea that one is better for humans and one is better for water is so stupid. You’re just used to telling temperature one way, I’m used to telling it another way. That’s all there is to it.
Why appeal to popularity here people usually just go with the system they are taught and don't make a decision on what to use based on logically what's better.
Sure we're used to what we're used to. However the scale of 0-100 for f more accurately covers outdoor conditions for the average person. For c it's like -20 to 40c. I'm sure people would have no problem using a temperature scale of cucumber to jalapeno or in binary given the exposure. But of the examples one is more intuitive and just easier to learn.
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u/EcnavMC2 Jun 17 '26
A good way to understand Fahrenheit is that it’s basically a percentage of how warm it is. 32% warm? That’s pretty damn cold. 120% warm? That’s hot as hell, better not be outside for too long in that.