Hacker News Reader

Comment by eli_gottlieb | Hacker News Reader

Hello fellow oleh amerika'i.

Funny thing is, there's one metric unit I truly don't like: temperature. Fahrenheit-scale temperature is just better for describing the immense ranges of cold and heat you'll see inside the average year in a very temperate place like the United States or large parts of Europe. Only over here in a warm climate like Israel does Celsius make sense, where zero degrees is actually one of the coldest temperatures of winter and forty degrees the hottest temperature of summer.

For distances, I don't really consider Imperial or Metric that much more useful. They're just slightly different.

View on HN

Never in my life, which ranged from living in tropical jungles to snowy European cities, have I ever felt the desire for differences in measuring temperature.

Comparing F and C is one of the most obvious cases for metric, as I see it. 0 is freezing, 100 is boiling. It couldn't be clearer.

The weather never actually hits "boiling".

Ah, but what it it when it is -40?

P. S.: This is a trick question.

The one very good thing about Celsius scale is conversion of energy amount of heating up water to calories. Those as such are still not so useful but the conversion to J is still something you can do roughly in your head. (Of course, conversions between °C and °F are simple for anyone who started their learning of C from K&R).

Actually, temperature is the only thing which regularly makes me long for the metric system. I used to think celcius was ridiculous until I realized how useful it was as a tool to intuitively understand large temperatures. Just divide by 100! When I see 2500 F, that number is essentially meaningless to me, but when I see 1400 C, I immediately think "oh, that's like 14 times (freezing to) boiling, that's hot!".

> I immediately think "oh, that's like 14 times (freezing to) boiling, that's hot!"

You can only say that X is K times as hot as Y if you're using an absolute temperature scale.

Here's the ratio of the two absolute temperatures in Python:

   >>> (1400 - -273.15) / (100 - -273.15)
   4.483853678145518

So 1400 C is only about 4.5 times as hot as 100 C.

IMHO, the metric temperature scale should have absolute zero at 0 degrees and the freezing point of water at 100 degrees. But due to historical accidents, it...doesn't.

Quick question for thermodynamics nerds: Is the mean kinetic energy of molecules in a sample proportional to temperature? I bet it's actually proportional to temperature squared, or at least some power of temperature.

Why is having to use negative temperatures a problem?

It isn't since in the fahrenheit scale temperatures drop below zero as well. It's just that we rate a lot of stuff on a scale of 0 to 100, so with the fahrenheit system it just makes sense to know that 0 is really cold and 100 is really hot.

Celsius is more intuitive for cooking.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com