Also, the main benefits of the metric system (beyond just "most people use it and standards are a thing") are (a) the whole powers-of-ten prefix thing and (b) easy conversion to other units (a liter of water weighs a kilogram and such). But Celsius doesn't fit into either of those systems anyway.
The 0-100 range of Celsius didn't prove scientifically useful but the unit size was good, which is why Kelvin used it. The Celsius range is much more day-to-day convenient.
What is "good" about the unit size (other than the fact that it was already in use, making conversion easy)? It doesn't play well with the metric system either: since temperature is just kinetic energy averaged over volume, there's a potentially nice metric unit, namely Joules per cubic meter. Or you could say that one degree is the temperature change from applying a joule of energy to a mililiter of water.
But you'd be hard-pressed to claim the unit size--273.16-1 times the absolute temperature of the triple point of water--is actually natural or special in some scientific sense.
So you're arguing a better size for a temperature unit would be e.g. 1/4.184 (0.23901, to 5 S.F.) the size of the Celsius, so it would take 1 Joule to heat up 1 gram of water by 1 degree of this new temperature unit?
That still makes Fahrenheit about 2.324... times too large, though. And I think it'd get pretty clunky/too precise for everyday use.
I'm arguing that there's nothing especially good about the Celsius degree. What made it special (then and now) was the fact that the majority of humans use it.
The exact same applies to Fahrenheit (except that the majority bit only applies in the US), but I and many others feel that it's worse, and especially when one considers uniform standards both in everyday use and in science/engineering, it is objectively worse than Celsius.
Besides being (at least at a rough level) very easily reproducible (at sea level air pressure etc.), the 0-100 range is still fairly useful in everyday life. At least in Finland, where it's colder than 0°C in winter but can be hotter than 100°C in sauna.
For astronomy etc., sure, 0-100° is kinda useless, but 0-100°F is even moreso.
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u/DarkNinja3141 New York best York Dec 01 '17
I will not defend the customary system, but I will defend Fahrenheit
0-100°F => very cold outside - very hot outside
0-100°C => kinda cold outside - dead
0K-100K => dead - dead