alt text

Comic strip of a ghost and a person with the American flag pasted on the head. The ghost repeats "Boo!" in the first three panels without getting any reaction, but when it in the fourth panel says "kg, cm, km, °C" the American gets scared and screams "AHHHH!!!".

Edit: fixed alt text

  • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Europeans acting smug like knowing how close to boiling the temperature is is more important than knowing how close to 100% hot out the temperature is.

      • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        If it's 0 F, it's 0% hot out. If it's 50 F, it's 50% hot out, if it's 100F, it's 100% hot out.

        It's a more human measurement. Who the hell knows how long a kilometer or meter is? Everyone knows what a football field looks like and a yard is 1/100th of it.

        • Masimatutu@lemm.ee
          hexagon
          ·
          1 year ago

          I mean... I could say the same thing about Celsius and it would make the exact same amount of sense.

          • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            It has never been literally boiling outside (except for when you're in the middle of a forest fire or next to a lava flow).

            Besides, Fahrenheit is more scientific because it translates 1:1 to Rankine, where 0 is absolute zero.

            • Masimatutu@lemm.ee
              hexagon
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Percent of what, exactly? It has been a lot more than 100 Fahrenheit and a lot less than 0.

              Edit: Kelvin is the scientific standard with 0 at absolute zero, and that translates directly to Celsius.

              • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Percent of how close it is to 100% hot out.

                But in seriousness, 100 was supposed to be based on the human body temperature. When it's above 100, it's harder to cool yourself off.

                • Masimatutu@lemm.ee
                  hexagon
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  Are you just trolling? "100% hot out" literally doesn't mean anything.

                  Edit: Ah, I see :P

                  But the human body temp isn't 100 °F, though

                  • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    It's based on how humans react to the heat, you need active cooling such as sweat, moving air isn't enough above 100 degrees. 100% hot out is just a silly way of putting it.

                      • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
                        ·
                        1 year ago

                        Supposedly the temperature salt freezes at, but it's off by quite a bit. I'm not sure if it has any implications for staying warm in cold weather.

                        • Masimatutu@lemm.ee
                          hexagon
                          ·
                          edit-2
                          1 year ago

                          I found it on Wikipedia. At first, he fixed zero at the stable temperature of a "mixture of ice, water, and salis Armoniaci [transl. ammonium chloride]" and 96 at the human body temperature, but later he would change the lower reference point to water's freezing point at 32 and still later the upper one to the boiling point of water at 212. So it has always been pretty arbitrary.

                          Edit: But I will agree that the scale of zero to one hundred does correspond more closely to how warm humans feel.

            • Masimatutu@lemm.ee
              hexagon
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              100°C is an acceptable sauna temperature. You won't last much longer naked in 0°C!

              Edit: To make my point more clear, I know some crazy people who go directly from a close to 100 degree sauna to a close to 0 degree ice bath. I think that could be described quite well as going from 100 to 0 % within the human temperature tolerance.

              Also, that's not my initial point. My initial point was that "percent hot outside" means nothing in Fahrenheit or Celsius.

              (whoops, pressed delete instead of edit)

        • SolarNialamide@lemm.ee
          ·
          1 year ago

          Who the hell knows how long a kilometer or meter is?

          Everyone outside of America.

          Everyone knows what a football field looks like

          You're either trolling or a living embodiment of the 'Americans think the USA is the whole world' meme. Nobody outside of the USA knows how long a football field is.

        • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
          ·
          1 year ago

          The heck is 50% hot out? How is that even helpful lmao

          28°c is a nice weather but 82.4°f(or 82.4% hot) sounds unlivable.

          • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            ·
            1 year ago

            Lol 82.4°F is hot af. Depending on the humidity it could be quite uncomfortable.

            Truly unlivable would be anything over 100.

            50 is fairly mild. Cool, but not really cold at all. Long sleeves, pants, maybe a light jacket weather.

            • Annoyed_🦀 @monyet.cc
              ·
              1 year ago

              No it's not, as i live in the equator, and that's the issue i have with fahrenheit. The whole thing is devoid of context and people think it makes sense naturally.

        • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          ·
          1 year ago

          I get what you're saying, but only people who live in a country where (American) football is played would know how big a football field is.

      • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        ·
        1 year ago

        100°F is roughly (like really roughly) the hottest temp your likely to see in most temperate climates throughout a year. 0°F is(again really roughly) the lowest. The result is you can use Fahrenheit basically as a percentage, or a 0 to 100 temperature score to help you decide how to dress/prepare for the day. If the temperature is above or below 100 or 0 then you need to consider fairly serious precautions before going outside for any length of time.

        It's not a very precise system at all, and it obviously has no place in a laboratory or similar situation. But it does work quite well for communicating the weather to common people. There is very little desire among Americans to change to Celsius not because they don't understand it (we're all taught Celsius in grade school) but because Fahrenheit serves most people's needs perfectly adequately.

        OP is also arguing that easily recalling the boiling temperature of water (one of the big purported advantages of Celsius) is useless for most people as nobody actually measures the temperature of water while boiling it. Except, maybe, in a classroom, probably while demonstrating to children how the Celsius scale works.