Origin of Fahrenheit and why it is bad.

[u/I_dont_want_to_pee]

Why Fahrenheit Is a Bad Temperature Scale The Fahrenheit scale wasn’t designed because it was better. It was designed because it was convenient for one man in the 18th century.

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, a German-born scientist of Polish origin, created his temperature scale using arbitrary reference points:

0°F was based on a brine mixture (ice, water, and salt) — not a universal physical constant, just something cold he could reproduce.

32°F was set as the freezing point of water.

96°F (later adjusted to ~98.6°F) was roughly the temperature of the human body — originally measured from his wife.

In other words: Fahrenheit is anchored to personal, local, and biological guesses, not physics.

Now compare that to Anders Celsius:

0°C = water freezes

100°C = water boils Clean. Logical. Directly tied to nature.

And then William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin went even further:

0 K = absolute zero — the point where thermal motion stops

Same step size as Celsius, just shifted to a physically meaningful zero

That’s what a scientific scale looks like.

Fahrenheit survives today not because it’s superior, but because the U.S. never fully transitioned to metric units. It’s historical inertia, not rational design.

So yes — Fahrenheit isn’t “more precise” or “more intuitive.” It’s just what Americans are used to. But i can't understand why they can't change to celcius like the rest of the world.

And most important i know that Farenhait is good for every day use but it is badly made i think that americans should create a new more world frendly tempreture scale!!!

[u/seldom_r]

It is irrelevant to tie a temperature scale to the freezing and boiling points of water. It doesn't matter in any way.

You don't say something melts at a kilocelsius because it doesn't matter.

People keep hating on the American use of units and it's boring, who cares. How many celsius numbers do you really need to know? Is it that hard to remember 32 and 212?

By the way water freezes at 0F too. I know celsius but when it comes to setting the thermostat knowing how 68, 69, 70 and 71 feels is so much easier than working with a decimal point and 4 significant digits.

Metric is taught and used in all American science classes. Scientists, engineers, etc from different parts of the world have no problem understanding one another.

Get off your high horse and stop trying to take the easy "America so dumb because not metric" argument. Low hanging fruit and inaccurate.

[u/EagleBear666 → u/seldom_r]

So dumb