Unless you're doing some kind of scientific calculaton there's no need to think about decimals of celsius at all. Just like Fahrenheit users surely don't care whether it's 50 or 53 or whatever. It's around 50, that's all you need to know.
But if it was closer to freezing say 42°F =5.556 °C (again) so 5°C. So arbitrarily we could say 57°F was 12°C =53.6 °F actually.
But a true Canuck knows knowing the temp is barely half the battle, what’s the wind speed and humidity? 29°C can be a lovely day if it’s dry or completely unbearable if it’s humid.
We hardly ever use decimals for weather-related measurements, the other factors above being more relevant.
Contrast that with measurements where I would say if you need to know a precise one you should be using decimal; ie what do you do if it doesn’t precisely third or fourth? If you’re talking about tool sizes then any system works as long as your froodle matches the grommlet.
C * 2 + 30 = ~F
(F - 32) / 1.8 = C
C * 1.8 + 32 = F
I personally find the math just as easy to do accurately. For example, 87F -32/1.8 = 55/1.8 =~30.5C. Compare that to your approximate method, which would give 28.5C, which is just wrong
(Maybe I just got really good at this when working a public facing job with a lot of American tourists - they would ask what our celsius temperatures were "in real units", so I got quite comfortable converting the air and water temps. Fahrenheit never once became intuitive to me, though.)
E.g., to convert 31℃ to ℉: 31 x 2 = 62. Subtract 6.2 = 55.8. Add 32 = 87.8℉.
If you want to round the result to the nearest integer the subtract 10% step is a convenient place: 31 x 2 = 62. Subtract 6 (rounded 6.2) = 56. Add 32 = 88℉.
When going the other way and dividing, I similarly find it mentally easier to multiply by 10/18 (rather than just divide by 1.8)
(C + 40) * 9/5 - 40 = F
Takes advantage of the fact that -40 F and -40 C are the same.
Remember it as (move origin -- convert -- move origin back).
I find it easier as a I don't have to remember precedence rules and the multiplication is obvious.
AS someone that grew up with metric that feels fairly natural and not tight at all?
>Inches/feet being base 12 divides better into thirds and fourths, which is very useful in construction.
I used ruler tapes with both metric and imperial on either side and i always wondered how one could use the inches since they're so big and didn't always have the same minute subdivisions. Also doing my math in decimals seemed easier than calculating with quarter or 1/8th inches or smaller.
>For science, sure, I'll use metric.
Surely it would feel more natural to use the same for everything and all measurements.
I want to know how much rainwater my IBC roughly holds. I take out my measuring tape real quick. I'm not even sure how I'd get started in imperial without some strong intuition build up over years?
Really all there is to that discussion.
Your tape measure didn't have 1/3, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, and 1/32 subdivisions? Sounds like a bad tape measure (or really just one where US Customary was an afterthought).
As for science, well, most people don't do it. Those that do can use different things in different contexts, it's not that hard.
I think one of em did and the other didn't. Either way it seems far more difficult to do some math with.
That's really just because you're used to it. The rest is rationalization...
OTH of course the rest of the world can hardly complain since we didn't switch time or (angle-)degrees to decimal either ;)
So long as we live on earth, metric time won't make much sense.
That would have no impact on decimalizing sub-day units: 10 decidays in a day, 2 millidays to cook an egg... But no country did it, which speaks to the power our time traditions really hold in our psyche.
part of it is natural. We roughly divide day and night into 2 parts, so we already need to have considerations for halves.
It seems like base 12 was chosen simply due to religion. the zodiac defined the hours at night for ancient egypt, and the Goddesses of Seasons for Greece later on.
Minutes and seconds came because we let astronomers define them based on hours and movements of the sun along a dial. The time it'd take for a dial to traverse a literal arcminute and arcsecond (which is still a thing today). Though these times are very different from today's minutes and seconds. So we have math to thank for the base 60 measurements.
I forget which country did it but their historical time system counts hours as two halves from sunrise and then from sunset... That sounds a lot better than noon and midnight, to me. We could totally do
sunrise = 0.00
sunset = 9.99 -> 10.00
sunrise = 19.99 -> 0.00
The problem was that it messed with the week, having a "day of worship / rest" every 7 days, which was then every 10 days
And I just poke my nose out the window and look outside to see what the temperature is
Freezing.... ~30°F.... ~0°C
Need coat... ~50°F... ~10°C
T-shirt..... ~70°F... ~20°C
Melting..... ~90°F... ~30°C
ps HN tables are not really a thing, are they?
pps Suspiciously many experiments are conducted at 293K
So using Fahrenheit results in a pretty decent "as high as it can be without being clumsy" measurement system that covers just about all earthly temperatures.
If we only cared about increments of five or so degrees you could go higher resolution and it'd be fine because rounding would occur like we do with vehicle speeds. Or we could go lower resolution and just make the degrees bigger, which is basically what celsius is.
Kelvin is actually the most practical of the lot, FSVO [1]. It's not a 'degree', because it's anchored at absolute zero. It's just a bit unwieldy for our day-to-day, with room temperature at 293K. But I can imagine if people were to grow up with it, it wouldn't be too bad even then.
[1] eg. "Why can an aircon still heat the house at ten degrees below zero?"- "Well akshually, you still have 263K of heat energy to pump, not an actual problem"
(EDIT: Also fwiw I often use a spoon or whatever to scoop things into the bowl, vs. pouring, which means I have more control but can still offload the measuring part to the scale...)
Whatever gets the delicious baked goods in your mouth I guess
On a sidenote: an ounce is 100g here and a pound 500g. Mainly by being in common usage and translated to common used weights. "An ounce more okay?" is an easy way to sell more without mentioning how much it actually is in numbers.
1 US cup is 2.37dL.
Otherwise, a metric tablespoon is 15mL and a teaspoon is 5mL.
In the US, you buy measuring spoons that have specific sizes (1tbsp is 1/2oz, and 1tsp is 1/3tbsp).
I wonder if there's a place on the internet where I can find more of this sort of seemingly strong and well-thought out arguments for something that is so clearly subjective (if not just inferior).
Any platform where snooty articulate people congregate will have such arguments by the bushel.
Well played
0°C.................100°C
Cold Dead
0°F.................100°F
Really Cold Really Hotif "room temperature" was smack in the middle, at 50 degF, you might have a point.
but no, it's pure post-hoc rationalization.
being naked at 0 degF will kill you. being naked at 100 degF will (usually) not. they're not remotely equivalent.
instead, think of it this way - human beings are mostly water, and 0 to 100 degC is "percentage of the way from water's freezing point to boiling point".
room temperature is "about 20% of the way to boiling". 40% or higher starts to cause our bodies to overheat. a typical sauna will be somewhere between 50 and 70% of the way.
0K..................100K
Dead Still Deadthis for me is the real appeal of metric, not that somehow a meter is magical, but at least there is one system, with a consistent set of rules, that allows us to do some magic things like tell the approximate volume of water given a weight.
edit: omg I forgot about nominal wood sizes. the underlying system actually has different units based on the material and the usage. copper gauge is not the same as steel gauge. thats pretty hopeless. for precious metals we also have the pennyweight
With you on temperature though.
https://surveysupplyinc.com/lufkin-12-foot-hi-viz-engineers-...
If you take a look at American grocery stores, you'll see things like: “40 × 16.9 FL OZ (1.05 PT) 500 mL BOTTLES / NET 676 FL OZ (5.28 GAL) 20 L” https://www.instacart.com/assets/domains/product-image/file/...
To dissect that product: It's a pack of 40× 500 mL of bottled water. I have zero problems with the metric labeling. But for the US customary units, you can see a jumble: decimal fluid ounces, decimal pints, a large number of fluid ounces, and decimal gallons. Note that the gallons can be broken down into mixed units (and some packaging does that); 676 fl oz = 5 gal 1 qt (0 pt) (0 cup) 4 fl oz exactly. The US units are basically "whatever I feel like using" (don't forget tsp and tbsp, which aren't used in the current example). The metric units for liquid consumer products are always mL and L, which greatly simplifies learning and comparison for the consumer.
Survey foot or international foot?
They might have measured precisely at the weather station, but local variation in temperature makes that extra precision meaningless unless you are located exactly where the measurement happened.
Even in a climate controlled room, there will be a degree or two of variation between different parts of the room.
that extra decimal point gives people false confidence about the measurement being more precise than it is.
because so much science (even in the US) happens using the metric system, the actual measured average [0] is 37 degC, and 37.0 degC == 98.6 degF. the nuance of the average being more of a confidence interval (37 +/- 0.5 degC, possibly larger) gets lost as well.
The results from this recipe were never consistent when I used volume measurements. I converted to mass in metric and now I get consistent results.
adapted from: [https://www.justsotasty.com/wprm_print/11594](https://www.justsotasty.com/wprm_print/11594)
Banana Brownies
Prep Time: 15 minutes mins
Cook Time: 35 minutes mins
Total Time: 50 minutes mins
### Equipment
- 9x13 inch (23 x 33 cm) baking pan*
### Ingredients
- 227 g unsalted butter (2 US sticks) unsalted butter (The better the butter, the better the results. In the U.S. market, Kerrygold yields the best results, followed by Cabot, and "well, it's still brownies" Market Basket house brand.) - 400 g dark brown sugar - 2 large eggs - 5-10 ml vanilla extract - 150 g mashed bananas (about 2-3 large, brown bananas) - 156 g all-purpose flour (I prefer King Arthur All Purpose Unbleached Flour) - 60-70 g cocoa powder - 2-3g teaspoon salt - 280(ish) g chocolate chips (I prefer Ghirardelli Bittersweet 60% Cacao Baking Chips, use 1 bag) )
### Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F degrees (180C or 170C fan forced). Line a 9x13 inch (23x33 cm) pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil leaving an overhang around the sides. Alternatively, lightly grease the pan. - Melt the butter in a double boiler. Add in the brown sugar, stir, and let it sit in the double boiler, stirring occasionally until the mixture has a nice caramelly flavor. - While the butter-sugar mixture is cooking in the double boiler, combine the dry ingredients. - Sometimes cocoa powder is lumpy, and you may need to sift it. The alternative I use is combined flour, cocoa powder, and salt, and use a whisk to mix it all together and break up any lumps if there are any. - Take the brown sugar butter mixture off of the double boiler and mix in the mashed bananas and vanilla. - The bananas usually cool the mixture enough that the eggs won't cook when you put them in, but if the mixture is hot, add some flour, add some of the dry ingredients, and that will cool it down enough to add the eggs safely. - Stir in the chocolate chips. - Pour/spoon the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 35 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean or with a few damp crumbs. - Cool fully (about 4 hours), then slice. Store brownies in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days. (Never last that long in my house)
[edit: speech recognition error correction.]
Otherwise, if you use a vessel with markings for various volumes, you waste a lot of time to ensure that the quantity in the vessel lines precisely to a marking and its surface is perfectly level, in comparison with weighing the same ingredient. Moreover, you have one more vessel to wash.
I eat only food that I cook myself and I use only 2 kinds of volume measurements. I use a set of volumetric spoons for measuring various kinds of powders used in small quantities, e.g. salt and spices. I also use a graded beaker for water. For any other ingredients, it is much faster to put the vessel in which they will be cooked on digital weighing scales, and pour there each ingredient until the right weight is reached. Besides being faster, this also avoids the need to use additional vessels, which would need washing. The graded beaker is better for water only because it must be taken from the tap, where I cannot put the weighing scales.
For example, this includes making bread, when I pour water in a bowl that will be used for kneading with a graded beaker, then I pour the flour while weighing until the desired weight is reached, then salt is added with a small volumetric spoon.
If you convert a nice, round number from one system to the other, you'll end up with a more precise, less nice number, which will give the impression that Celsius is harder to use.
In reality, people from metric countries just think in 5-degree increments: 25 is a beautiful day, 30 is hot. It doesn't feel any harder to read than Fahrenheit.
I wonder if there are people that moved to the U.S., switched to Fahrenheit and now find it more intuitive than Celsius. If one is easier than the other, I assume it still doesn't make up for the hurdle of learning a new system.
I've done the move twice in each direction. Neither is more intuitive.
When I moved back to C after 22 years in F, I had to adjust again. It took a few months. The other times were after fewer years, but still took (re)adjusting.
I worked as an engineer and the only drawings specified in imperial were pre 1970s and all the CNC controls are programed in mm feed rates in mm/rev or mm/min
all of the math normal people use in everyday life happens in base 10.
"it's easy because it's base 12" is an absolutely ludicrous idea.
what's 7'5" divided by 3? divided by 4?
what happens if you need to divide by 5?
and sure, there are various mental math tricks you can learn to make this easier...or you could just use the metric system.
7'5" is 226cm. that's a normal, boring, everyday, base 10 integer.
you don't need to learn a special set of "mental math for base 12" tricks. instead you can re-use the same mental math tricks you use for every other base 10 number.
only because that is what you are accustomed to
because I grew up with metric, m/cm are much more convenient for daily use
I will allow that a "foot" is useful as an approximate intermediary unit between m and cm
> Inches/feet being base 12 divides better into thirds and fourths, which is very useful in construction.
again only because the US construction industry grew up using fractions instead of decimals
Below 10 deg C - it is cold, Heavy jacket weather
10-15 Typical winter weather (at least where I live) light jacket
15-20 Spring/Autumn weather long sleeves no jacket required
20-25 Pleasant day T-shirt weather
25-30 Getting hot, ceiling fans/AC time
30-35 Hot
35+ very Hot
Meanwhile, I'm fine at 98.6 degrees, but everyone freaks out over 100 degrees. it's a more precise unit, right?
feet/inches make more sense to be attached to. they are based on your body parts (roughly), and we spend a lot of time looking at humans. inches divide our fingers, feet are... well, feet. And yards are steps. We intuitively know what all those feel like through everyday life compared to the scientific way we derive a centimeter. inches and feet being base 12 is more a coincidence than anything else (or maybe not. Maybe there's some golden ratio shenanigans at play).
Fahrenheit has more precision without using decimals for the thing 99% of people are using temperature measurements for: air temp. Where I live, we generally experience 5 degrees F - 100 degrees F at different points of the year. That's 95 degrees of precision with no decimal. In C, that's -15 to 37.8, a mere 52.8 degrees. The difference between 75 (usually a beautiful day) and 85 (hot) is 23.8C to 29.4C. Everything packed into this tight range.
Inches/feet being base 12 divides better into thirds and fourths, which is very useful in construction.
For science, sure, I'll use metric.