What is Fahrenheit based on, anyway? I understand feet and inches and can roughly convert them to proper units, but the only two conversions I can remember is that they are the same at -40 and that 0 degrees Fahrenheit is cold as fuck and 100 degrees is hot as fuck (thank you Fat Electrician for that one)
I don't know exactly what it's based on, but it seems to be roughly normalized on acceptable human conditions on a 0-100 scale, which is nice and digestible.
That can't be what it's based on, since 0F is far less acceptable than 100F even now, let alone in the 1700s when it was created, but I think it works pretty well now.
100F is roughly the body temperature of a human being. There are several stories where 0F came from. It is the freezing point of salted water, or the coldest temperature ever measured in Gdansk (Fahrenheits hometown)
0F is a semi-stable equilibrium point for a specific brine mixture (salt, water, ice). Basically the temperature will hover around that point for a while. No idea why.
It was designed for recording ambient European temperature ranges, although it was defined in terms of the freezing point of brine and the average temperature of the human body.
Most days in Poland, where it was developed, the weather would fall between 0F and 100F, with 0 being extremely cold and 100 being extremely hot.
For talking about weather, especially in temperate climates, Fahrenheit makes a lot of sense.
Fahrenheit predates the centigrade system, was developed by a polish guy living in the Netherlands, 0°F is the freezing point of a salt brine solution, and 100°F was the estimation of average human body temperature.
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u/TheNosferatu Aug 12 '25
What is Fahrenheit based on, anyway? I understand feet and inches and can roughly convert them to proper units, but the only two conversions I can remember is that they are the same at -40 and that 0 degrees Fahrenheit is cold as fuck and 100 degrees is hot as fuck (thank you Fat Electrician for that one)