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anvuongyesterday at 9:24 PM5 repliesview on HN

Not sure how Celsius is worse? Its unit is the same of Kelvin, just shifted by 273. 0C is freezing, 100C is boiling. Some people say Fahrenheit is more representative of how people feel, but that is very subjective and biased towards the West and Northern hemisphere.


Replies

atonseyesterday at 10:17 PM

Celsius in a lab (or in cooking) is perfectly fine.

But as a way to describe daily weather (and thermostats) it's woefully inadequate.

The sum total of "comfortable" temperatures in celsius has to be squeezed between maybe 17 to 24 - why? you never ever use anything above 40 except when talking about people that died from a heatwave.

It's based on the freezing and boiling point of water _at sea level_ which almost none of us ever encounter (whether it's sea level, or the boiling point of water).

Fahrenheit is a much more intuitive scale (again... to describe daily weather or human temperature) - 0 - 100 better models the temperatures we experience daily, and you can intuitively separate into 10s, the way you "feel"

For example...

100s - honey, please, let's move to a cooler place.

90s - uncomfortably hot

80s - hot in the sun, not too bad at night

70s - you'd probably want a light sweater at night

60s - light sweater all the time

50s - medium sweater

40s - sweater, maybe a coat

30s - coat

20s - sweater and coat

10s - why am i living in this region?

0s - honey, please, let's move to a warmer place.

The point is that there's enough resolution to describe the actual human experience with temperature.

For everything else, celsius is perfectly adequate, totally agree.

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jandrewrogersyesterday at 11:47 PM

> biased towards the West and Northern hemisphere

The widest range of temperatures found in any country is the USA. In the continental US alone the temperatures easily exceed -50°C and 50°C in both directions (much colder if you include Alaska). The USA also has the largest temperature change ever recorded in a 24 hour period, at 57°C.

Merits of specific measurement systems aside, the USA is arguably the most representative single country on Earth when it comes to temperature and "how people feel". It has among the hottest, coldest, and most extreme temperature ranges ever recorded.

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ghaffyesterday at 9:48 PM

"Just shifted by 273"

To be clear, I don't have strong feelings. Obviously in a lot of science/engineering fields we use Celsius degrees a lot. But we also us Kelvin absolute scale a lot which would be ridiculous for day-to-day usage.

I am used to Fahrenheit but it is also a finer scale and a nice round number for boiling is largely irrelevant for the vast majority of purposes. Yes, knowing the freezing point of water can be important but memorizing one simple number probably isn't a huge stretch especially that the reality differs based on a number of factors. Arguably, knowing that 0 degrees F means fricking cold is sort of a higher latitudes bias but I'm not sure the degree to which Celsius simplifies.

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jandrewrogersyesterday at 11:35 PM

> Its unit is the same of Kelvin, just shifted by 273

You mean shifted by 273.15 because Kelvin doesn't have tidy fixed points at the freezing and boiling point of water, unlike Celsius and Fahrenheit.

Celsius and Fahrenheit are both utilitarian systems. Kelvin is the scientific system. Arguments about the relative utility of C° and F° are subjective and neither is particularly optimal for science.

hn993302yesterday at 10:07 PM

Celsius isn't granular enough. Many digital thermostats will even add decimal places if you switch to Celsius mode that aren't present in Fahrenheit.

Secondly, the highest temperature ever recorded outdoors was 56.7˚C. So no matter where you are, from that to 99 is wasted.

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