this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
2034 points (94.1% liked)
Memes
45730 readers
914 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Then why don't you USE IT?
I personally use metric as much as I can. The temperature on my phone for example is in celsius, try me.
Because for weather, °F is arguably better. 0°F - 100°F is the general range that most weather on the planet happens at (yes I know there are extremes where it gets to like -30°F or 120°F, but bear* with me). You can then further break those up into 10°F segments that are a bit more practical and granular than 10°C segments:
Now I know you can do something similar with °C, but the workable range there is smaller, because you're going from like -15°C to 40°C. It's less granular, and the start/stop temps are more awkward.
Is it weird that water freezes at 32°F and boils at 212°F? Sure, absolutely. When you're doing stuff in that context, it absolutely makes sense to use Celsius, where you're working on a nice, neat 0°C-100°C range. But weather, the thing most people contextualize temperatures with, doesn't happen in that range. It starts well below freezing, and (hopefully) doesn't get anywhere close to the boiling point of water. For that, I'd argue °F is actually a little more useful.
All these arguments don't really have any effect in reality. As someone born in Australia everyone is super comfortable with Celsius and the problems you describe just don't exist because in the end it's really just what you're used to.
To me Fahrenheit seems incredibly awkward but then I wasn't brought up using it.
Oh yeah I absolutely recognize that what you're used to or brought up on is gonna have a huge impact on which system you prefer. That being said, I think a Fahrenheit user would have a harder time switching to Celsius, than a Celsius user would switching to Fahrenheit, at least for normal day-to-day weather applications. And for some of the same reasons that people prefer metric units in general - it's more granular, has more resolution, is base 10 (for this application), etc.
Because it doesn't have as much resolution as Fahrenheit.
There are 180 degrees between freezing water and boiling water in °F. But 100 degrees between the two in °C. So with Fahrenheit we can give mote accurate temperature info without resorting to decimal degrees. And if your response is "learn to handle decimals" then the same argument can be given for inches vs mm.