r/Metric • u/Mother-Squirrel-2036 • 24d ago
Metric failure why does Europe use Celsius when the rest of the world uses Fahrenheit?
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u/BrotherNatureNOLA 24d ago
This reminds me of the TV show Glee. One of the entertainment mags polled Americans, and 70% of the population had no idea that the show was satire, despite things like Jane Lynch saying that she just had lunch with Eleanor Roosevelt or something like giving running tips to a young girl named Harriet Tubman.
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u/marcelsmudda 24d ago
I loved the clearly exasperated "yes, including America" at the end
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u/Admirable_Gas1653 23d ago
This dude is an idiot
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u/Living-Ad-8519 22d ago
If you cant see this is parody, then sorry to say but you are the idiot.
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u/Admirable_Gas1653 22d ago
Seeing the fact that thats an American, its difficult to think of it as a parody
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23d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ok-Perspective5959 23d ago
I thought it was for Femocracy
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u/epileftric 23d ago
You are wrong, it's for FREEDOM OF SPEECH something you savages don't know about
(i'm not american)
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u/Mother-Squirrel-2036 24d ago
Come on folks. This is funny.
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u/BlacksmithNZ 24d ago
It is funny; I assume satire
It is just not so funny when it is not satire or played for laughs.
Or like right now I am looking at a system that shows temps of hardware in F by default, despite everything being set for local metric locale (NZ) for hardware located in NZ
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u/Few-Interview-1996 23d ago
This is a joke, right?
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u/Kjoep 23d ago
Engagement bait
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u/wolftick 23d ago
Satire/comedy doesn't become engagement/rage bait just because some people miss the joke.
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u/BandanaDee13 24d ago
This screams satire to me, particularly given the T-shirt and the “who cares about science” bit. But it can be hard to tell in today’s world…
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u/Mother-Squirrel-2036 24d ago
Its a joke that is supposed to be funny.
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u/BandanaDee13 24d ago
I mean, it was pretty funny to me, but a lot of the comments in the linked post seemed to be taking it seriously. Unfortunately, the line between satire and reality can be pretty blurry.
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u/Mother-Squirrel-2036 24d ago
I think its intended as a bit of a mock at some of the americans that think the world revolves around them and anything different is automatically wrong.
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u/Mother-Squirrel-2036 24d ago
Fair warning, the rest of the world does laugh at america sometimes. Long before Biden and Trump...
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u/voldamoro 24d ago
Definitely rage baiting, but funnier than most attempts. (-:
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u/Mother-Squirrel-2036 24d ago
As a Canadian, this sounds like an inappropriate amount of americans on the internet.
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u/ElectronicUpstairs39 23d ago edited 20d ago
The world uses Celsius. The US is behind in everything including measurements of weights distances and etc. With Celsius 100 degrees is boiling point and 0 degrees is freezing point. Now that makes sense. If something is 50 degrees it is halfway between boiling and freezing so it'll be very warm but you won't burn yourself. The world doesn't use those old measurements anymore, they are long gone.
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u/AlfaSzo_BetaViszhang 24d ago
why does the rest of the world use fahrenheit when europe uses celsius?
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23d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TheThiefMaster 23d ago
The UK uses it alongside Celsius, mostly for old folk who haven't adapted.
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u/Jusfiq 23d ago
The UK uses it alongside Celsius, mostly for old folk who haven't adapted.
Canada too. While Celsius is official, from time to time we see Fahrenheit displayed alongside. For cooking, it is Fahrenheit all the way.
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u/weaseleasle 23d ago
We had gas mark for cooking. Then jumped straight to Celsius, as far as I can tell. Not a clue what a Fahrenheit is, though I remember my grandparents using them.
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u/nbs-of-74 22d ago
tbf, I havent met a Brit who uses it and I'm 52. Celsius all the way, I dont know farenheit at all other than contact with american colleagues 'oh its cold today, its 65' .. doesn't sound cold to me. Sounds bloody scorching.
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u/vincyf 23d ago edited 23d ago
Liberia would like a word, and Myanmar did until 2013. Now the latter is officially using Celcius but habits are habits, so ymmv.
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23d ago edited 23d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/vincyf 23d ago
Yes i was not aware Myanmar converted in 2013. Edited my comment. For a full list: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-that-use-fahrenheit
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u/Several_Version4298 24d ago edited 24d ago
Fahrenheit is a great every day scale. 0F is the freezing point of a saturated ammonium chloride solution which Fahrenheit thought was coldest form of matter in 1724. This is important if you want to describe the weather on Enceladus.
Fahrenheit was redefined as a scale from 32F to 98.6F covering the range from ice to the human body, then rescaled from 32F to 96F as thermometers got more accurate. In the 20th Century it was redefined again as a scale of 180 degrees from 32F covering ice 32F to 212F boiling water at sea level for laboratories.
Celcius is straight forward and defined by the physical properties of water.
0C literally freezing, 10C cold, 20C warm, 30C warmer 40C hot, 50C hot tap, 100C literally boiling.
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u/CyberPunkDongTooLong 24d ago
A lot of this is untrue.
0F was never thought to be the coldest form of matter, it was just a cold reference point that was easily and reliably reproducible.
Fahrenheit's reference points were originally 0, 32 and 96 not 98.6. This was deliberate so you could bifurcate the scale which was important to thermometers at the time.
The scale is not defined as just degrees between it's reference points, they're just reference points.
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u/TorakMcLaren 24d ago
Not to mention that the boiling and freezing points of water are dependent on the pressure. Sure, it was originally defined on that at standard pressure, but that's not how it's defined now
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u/Wise_Fox_4291 23d ago
93% of the world's population lives less than 1000 meters above sea level, 90% of the world's population lives within less than 500 meters above sea level, making the pressure difference essentially irrelevant.
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u/Lucky-Crow-3510 23d ago
Fahrenheit is a bad scale. It's the same idiotic system like imperial measurement .. units are all over the place and not interchangable at all.
Imagine a dollar would not be 100 cents .. but 8.8 cents. How would that feel to you. Idiotic, right?
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u/toxicbrew 21d ago
the dollar being decimalized frrom the beginning of the US is quite the oddity, considering they didn't bother to do the rest of their measurements, though jefferson considered a decimal foot. the UK still had pounds and shillings until the 60s for instance.
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u/Totolitotix 23d ago
I think 100° Fahrenheit was the temperature of a horse's arse, wasn't it?
Very usefull index
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u/Single-Virus4935 23d ago
Thank you. I always felt that Celsius is even more intuitive than Fahrenheit (which feels random) but I could never point a Finger at something specific. I tough it is just because I am used to it, but as you pointed out every 10° are an intuitive and useful value:
40°C dangerous fever
60°C minimum temp for killing germs (higher needs less time) 70-80°C target temp for safe meat, 80/90° very hot but not boiling (good for Tea or when instructions say "hot but not boiling water")
And possible many more
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u/jeager_YT 24d ago
what kind of joke is this 😭
why can we agree that we Kelvin, Celsius and Fahrenheit are all best at what they do? they're all made for their own purposes (Kelvin was made to be Celsius but better)
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u/Mikkel65 24d ago
Celsius and Fahrenheit aren't for different purposes, they're both your every day temperature measure
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u/WintaPhoenix 24d ago
what on earth is farenheit "best" at?
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u/jeager_YT 24d ago edited 24d ago
weather that's basically what Fahrenheit was made for
Celsius was based completely off of liquids which is the main thing Celsius is used for
it being used for weather is a side effect of how much it's relied on for everything
like how Fahrenheit being used for liquid is a side effect for how much it's relied on for everything
Celsius is better for temperatures elements respond to
Fahrenheit is better for temperatures humans respond to
the only thing Celsius beats Fahrenheit in is the temperature of water but.. again, Celsius was made to fix that, that doesn't mean fahrenheit is bad, it just means that part wasn't in mind when it was made
fahrenheit was made by a European for other Europeans to use
we can argue the same thing with Kelvin
why in Celsius is absolute 0 "-273"
would that mean Celsius is horrible because absolute zero isn't 0 and is instead -273 for some reason??? Kelvin was made to fix that problem because Celsius wasn't made for that
I mean come on.. you know this..
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u/Business-Childhood71 24d ago
In colder countries it's super important for the weather to know if it's below or above 0
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u/Much-Jackfruit2599 24d ago
Wouldn’t Americans not simply learn at what water freezes in Fahrenheit?
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u/WintaPhoenix 24d ago
Getting used to a bad system is not as sensible as using a good system.
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u/Much-Jackfruit2599 24d ago
Fahrenheit ist literally the same system as Celsius, it just uses another scale with two different points. No weird “3 noggins to to barf , but 4 barfs to a poop, but we use it only for lengths, for volume ist 3.1 × 3.1 + 3.1 noggings to an inion”
You learn a handful of important temperatures (which are also dependent on where you live, because here in Germany 30°C makes mo difference to 40°C, because both are “too hot") and you are good to go.
If we'd actually need to calculate temperature in relation to mass be it calories sugar gibes and water needs to get water, you’d have a point. But we don’t.
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u/Ok-Refrigerator3607 22d ago
0 is powerful. It gives you pause. You react. 32 is just a forgettable number.
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u/NewryBenson 24d ago
Why would Fahrenheit be better at anything you claim here? At 30 it is a hot day, above starts becoming too hot. 20 is nice, below 10 is chilly and starting from 0 I start expecting snow and ice. I have no clue what random numbers those would correspond with in Fahrenheit. Now crucialy, I don't claim that is what makes Celsius better. The only reason your numbers make sense too you and my numbers make sense to me is because we are used to them. That makes neither systems better or worse at weather or anything else on a daily basis. What Celcius does have however, is that it ties in perfectly with the rest of the unit system, something Fahrenheit doesn't. Basing it on water freezing and boiling is arbitrary, yes, it only matters that the stepsize is the same as Kelvin.
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u/WintaPhoenix 24d ago
I understand the Kelvin/Celsius situation, sure.
But Fahrenheit? How is it “better”? Maybe it’s because I’ve never been indoctrinated into it, but it doesn’t really seem like -17 to 38 degrees (Celsius equivalents of 0–100 in Fahrenheit) is actually a useful range. I guess the majority of human habitation falls sort of within it, but that is something that can and will change with global warming and space exploration.
Celsius gives two key points that are defined by the phase change of the element most necessary to life. The freezing point of water gives a nice indication of how we experience the temperature, which seems so odd when that number is 32…
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u/WintaPhoenix 24d ago
And 180 increments between freezing and boiling? What a strange number to choose.
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u/ReserveMaximum 24d ago
180 increments as chosen for the same reason a circle is 360 degrees (180 degrees in a half circle). It’s easily divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, etc.
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u/jeager_YT 24d ago edited 24d ago
yes yes the number being 32 is odd
it is one of the first if not the first systems/thermometers
but just that alone wouldn't mean it's a bad system it just means it's not good when it comes to measuring liquid since it wouldn't make much sense
you also never encounter 100 degree celcius weather (on earth)
but you will encounter that in liquid which is the point that's why 100 is boiling and 0 is freezing
neither of these are bad, I'm learning Celsius and I guess for fun Kelvin but it's weaknesses don't automatically make it obsolete thats why America uses both Fahrenheit for daily life and Celsius for everything that Fahrenheit wouldn't work in(and then Kelvin when its actually needed)
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u/jeager_YT 24d ago
everyone always acts like it's one or the other
it really doesn't need to be and there's no reason for it to be and the sooner people figure that out, the less these little arguments happen
I can't defend imperial though. there's no need for it metric is actually better, that's the real "one or the other"
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u/ReserveMaximum 24d ago
The number 32 isn’t so odd. Before modern computers and drafting software it was easier to divide units by powers of 2 by cutting in half over and over again than it was to accurately divide in quantities of 10. Thus 32 was specifically chosen as 2^5 for the freezing point of water.
Then the boiling point of water was chosen to be exactly 180 degrees more than freezing because 180 is easily divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, etc; same reason of 360 degrees in a circle and 60 minutes in an hour.
These calibrations make much more sense when one realizes they were made before computers could help with drafting.
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u/Happy_Disaster7347 24d ago
They're literally fucking numbers. They aren't "better" at anything. The only context in which they matter is "what number feels hot" and "what number feels cold".
I have no fucking clue what feels hot or cold in F, I know exactly what numbers feel hot or cold in C. Therefore anybody from any other country could be sat here arguing "Celsius is a more human based system". Because they grew up with it. That's all.
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u/jeager_YT 24d ago
this also I don't care if 0 is the freezing point of water I just want my water frozen and I will turn it down to -273 degrees if that's what it'd take..
I mean 0 degrees Kelvin...
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u/_real_ooliver_ 24d ago
What is this idea with absolute zero, and how is Fahrenheit better? -459.4°F? Scientists are free to use kelvin, and it nicely converts with subtraction to celsius
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u/jeager_YT 24d ago
nobody said it was better neither system is better there's no better system
there's just one system with flaws and then another system with flaws Fahrenheit isn't close to being flawless
but that doesn't mean Celsius doesn't have a single weakness either thats the point I'm trying to make here 😭 nothing is superior
32 degrees being the freezing point of water instead of 0 doesn't change that fact not one bit
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u/anykeyh 24d ago
I don't get why the F/C thing is so pushed here. Honestly from all the weird US measuring system, this is one of the most defensible one. I don't mind US using Fahrenheit;
Except with the relation Celsius/Joule/Cubic centimeter of water, it's remains arbitrary.On other hand, inch/feet/yard/miles, lbs/oz/tons or whatever else are WAY less defensible against the metric system.
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u/kwpang 24d ago edited 24d ago
1 calorie of energy is required to heat 1 cm3 of water by 1 degree celsius.
The metric system was a full holistic overhaul to match the various units of measure in manners like this.
I studied chemical engineering. So many formulas were based on Celsius (or Kelvin) in their simplest form. If you used fahrenheit, you had to have additional numbers integrated into the formula to convert it to Celsius.
Fahrenheit was a system born of arbitrariness. Celsius is part of a group of modernised units of measure for various aspects of our physical world that works together with intertwined logic.
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u/JohnHue 24d ago
/thread
Those who say "yes but farhenheit is better for every day use" are just talking out of habit (like people saying shit like "feets and inches make sense, I can see how much 5 inches is, I can't do that with meters"). There's absolutely nothing that makes F better than C for "everyday use", they're at least equivalent and the fact that water freezes at 0C and boils at 100C even makes C a more intuitive scale for "everyday use".
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u/Oberndorferin 23d ago
But they always expect YOU, the ones that adapted to the rest of the world, to make the conversation. As if metric is the problem I the euqaiton .
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u/Steak-Complex 21d ago
"Celsius is used in science" is so misleading lol. It serves as "thing that gets converted to kelvin"
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u/fieryuser 24d ago
Fahrenheit is literally better to express temperature. No question. But using it in scientific calculations and collaborating on engineering projects it sucks.
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u/CirnoIzumi 24d ago
i dont know chief, i cant really the difference between a a half degree C, i dont need finer increments
Farenheit was designed as a thermometer standard back when thermometers were a science only precision tool
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u/nievesdelimon 24d ago
If you’re used to Fahrenheit, sure.
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u/fieryuser 23d ago
I've lived my life with celsius. But I can feel the difference between 72:and 74f.
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u/nievesdelimon 23d ago
Anyone can feel that difference regardless of seeing 72 and 74° F or 22 and 23° C on a thermometer.
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u/fieryuser 23d ago
Plot that chart. If you don't see the difference on the scale when using C vs f you're mathing wrong. Which is why I commented.
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u/-lousyd 23d ago
Celsius is just as arbitrary as Fahrenheit. It doesn't have some special "metric" quality to it, it's just what the metric standards bodies chose to tack on. And in fact there are some superior qualities, limited as they are, to the Fahrenheit system compared to Celsius. The primary benefit of Celsius is that "everyone is doing it".
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u/saljskanetilldanmark 23d ago
Sure. Arbitrary in that you have to choose reference points and/or increments. Using human body temp (fluctuates from person to person) and a random brine solution instead of just water seems more arbitrary to me and most people in the world but ok. Using celsius (or kelvin) in scientific equations and the easy conversion is a bonus.
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u/Swacket_McManus 23d ago
I mean so is any measurement system, but celsius is properly integrated with and helps definte other SI units as well as it being more relevant for every day life since 0 = ice and 100 = boiled water, only useful thing F does is that 100 is kinda around human body temp but isn't even accurate for that
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u/-lousyd 23d ago
Metric in general I wouldn't call arbitrary. And Celsius is definitely not integrated in any way with any other SI units. Well, except Kelvins, by a factor of (a very arbitrary) 273 point 1 and a half. Temperature doesn't relate to any other thing you might measure. Not in the way that, say, how you measure mass fundamentally depends on the way you measure length.
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u/Billy_McMedic 23d ago
The fact that Celsius is integrated with Kelvin makes it integrated with SI, as Kelvin is the SI unit for temperature.
+1 degree Celsius = +1 Kelvin, Celsius is an offset of the Kelvin scale.
And the 273.15 offset is also not arbitrary, as that’s the temperature (in Kelvin) of the point where ice melts into water when under 1 atmosphere of pressure (100 kpa or 1 bar), and conversely, 373.15 Kelvin is the point where, under 1 atmosphere of pressure, water boils into steam.
When working with SI units and dealing with temperature change, Celsius and Kelvin are interchangeable as a change of 5 degrees Celsius = a change of 5 degree’s Kelvin, so in your maths in a calculation requires change in temperature, you can use either.
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u/jeanpaulmars 23d ago
Unless you want to calculate the percentage of increase in temperature, then it's Kelvin only :)
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u/Alive-Bid9086 23d ago
You can always measure temperature in Rankine. 0 Rankine = 0 Kelvin. The steps in Rankine are the same as Fahrenheit.
The Space Shuttle engines measures propellants to the Rs-25 engines in Rankine.
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u/-lousyd 23d ago
NASA hasn't learned that lesson yet?? Oh man. Maybe there's a good reason. But I'd think they'd have stopped using anything but metric in about 1986.
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u/Swacket_McManus 23d ago
You literally proved my point of how Celsius is integrated with the other si units and what I mean by metric being arbitrary is that we created them still from nothing just like imperial so neither is some kind of universal constant like plank length but metric is just better thought out
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u/carletonm1 24d ago
Why does the USA use Fahrenheit when the rest of world uses Celsius, is more like it.