Seriously.

125 comments

-40F 🤝 -40C
- Even a broken clock is right twice day.
  
  cries in digital clock
- Fun fact!
- isn't it strange how they match up at such an exact number
  
  Funny how the imperial system matches at oddly exact numbers with the metric system... Strange indeed.

Pedantry:
K and °R agree on 0
K and °C agree on the unit difference
°F and °R agree on the unit difference
°R and °Ra are the exact same thing (??)
- Celsius and Fahrenheit agree on -40, but since they're scales that scale at different rates there's bound to be some value where they intersect rather than some meaningful number like Kelvin and Rankine being zeroed to Absolute Zero
  
  Same with 574.59°F = 574.59K
  
  Two lines which are not perpendicular will meet at one point?
- Also Rankine, being an absolute scale, theoretically shouldn't be in ° anything, and it's only some weird historical quirk that is the reason it usually is called degrees.
  
  I am not sure I follow that. The scale is always relative right? It’s just the zero that’s absolute. But that’s also the case with measuring angles where we do use the degree symbol.
- °R and °Ra are the exact same thing (??)
  I think °R is supposed to be Réaumur

Imagine if some distance measuring system decided their zero was at like 10 feet.
- Let me just shorten this down 8 feet
  welds on an extra 2 feet
- If using log scale, 0 is at -∞
  
  no 0 would be at 1
- I mean, the temperature can be -1. But nothing measures negative.
  
  Imagine if it did though.

Rankine and Kelvin have zero at the same point, which is absolute zero, and should not be used with the degree symbol
This concludes my TED talk
- According to Wikipedia Rankine is properly used with the degree symbol, but sometimes is not by analogy with Kelvin.
  
  Gross

I went down a huge rabbit hole cause of this. I personally like °F over °C but agree it's arbitrary. So I tried to make a scale that started at the coldest air temp on earth (some day in Antarctica) and went to the hottest day on earth (some day in death valley) and put the coldest day at 0°A and the hottest at 100°A.
Sadly this made a scale that was less precise than I'd like. I like that I can feel the difference between 73°F and 74°F and don't want to have to use decimals.
So maybe the end points could be only places where people actually live. Well it looks like some people live in Russia around -70°C and some people live in northern Africa around 50°C so if you just take °C and add 60 you can get a -10 to 110 scale where most temps would fall between 0 and 100. Still has the unit difference of °C (which I don't like) but I like that most temps are between 0 and 100. I also don't really like negative temperature since it seems wonky.
To "fix" the unit scale you could just multiply everything by 2 so the difference between each full degree is half as much. So temps would be between -20 and 220. °A = 2(°C + 60) °A = 2(°C) + 120
And it turns out I (basically) created the Fahrenheit scale but moved. °F= 1.8(°C) + 32
TL;DR: I'm stupid and this was fun but also a waste of time lol
- Celsius is tied to points of ice melting and water vaporising. Since water is very important for the life on our planet, it makes even more sense than arbitrary chosen meters or seconds.
  
  At sea level. Welcome to La Paz, where the triple point is made up and the freezing point doesn't matter!
  
  And similarly, Fahrenheit seems to be tied to the internal temperature of the human body, with 100 degrees being the maximum that the average person can handle before their organs start to be damaged.
- does you scale change as Earth warms?
  
  Add a scale revision for each year to the meme
- People live in -70c (-94f) weather? How the fuck do they do that?
  
  Once you're below -6C or so you just need more insulation. -6C to 10C in many ways can be harder to manage due to humidity, especially in wet conditions. My prolonged exposure experience is only down to -30C. I did not have enough insulation, but an extra base layer, better gloves/boots would have been sufficient. I was fine with fairly light clothing down to -18C. I hear -50C is where it starts to get really harsh again.
  Your body also adjusts a lot. In the Summer in wearing a puffy indoors at 10C(50F) but in the winter I'll go out in a t-shirt at -10C, especially if doing manual labor.

Never heard about °R and °RA before this meme
- It's the Rankine. Some Scottish dude wanted to use Kelvin without using Kelvin. It's basically the Fahrenheit scale but with 0˚R set at absolute zero.
  0˚R = 0K and 1˚R = 0K + 1˚F
  
  From what I can gather, R and Ra are the same thing?
- https://byjus.com/physics/unit-of-temperature/
  I had to look out up too!
- I just learned about °Ré and °Rø and now my head hurts.
  
  Now look into °De. It's upside down!

Comparing arbitrary degrees to absolutes. Notice K is the only one without the degree symbol...
- Would Rankine not be an absolute?
  
  yes it used the same zero as Kelvin

Celsius tried to fit too much into 100 notches to please big math.
F is more nuanced with more notches, but the ends aren't logical. It coukd be shifted perhaps, but how?
If freezing was moved to 0, then water boiling would be 180
Perhaps C could have had a 200 degree range, then it would be closer to F and not so hard to convert.
But also: Scientists are important and we shouldn't make it too easy, it demeans their work. Maybe make the C scale show water boiling at 183.4521 degrees so scientific calculations are more impressive-looking and respectable.
- and not so hard to convert
  "Please change the entire world's system to make it easier for the one country that uses a different one"
  
  It wouldn't even change the difficulty, really. You'd just wind up multiplying or dividing by 9/10 instead of 9/5.
- The SI unit scales are chosen to fit together to avoid "respectable" scientific calculations.
  To heat one milliliter (1 ml) of water one degree Celsius (1 °C) you need one calorie (1 cal) of energy.
  Also the dimensions of one milliliter, is one cubic centimeter (1 cm^3), and that amount of water weighs 1 gram (1 g).
  Thus 1 liter of water needs 1 kcal of energy to heat up 1 °C.
  
  I'm aware, taught that in school.
  Also aware of the real world, those things don't mesh the same at altitude.
  In theory, reality and theory are the same. In reality, they're not.
  I love science when it's not treated like a religion.
- It's not limited to 100 steps. The decimal system gives you infinite granularity.
- then it would be closer to F and not so hard to convert.
  So few countries use Fahrenheit that this shouldn't even be a consideration

When having a beer, I've always found it funny that one of the few imperial measurements metric nations kept around, the pint, America went and invented their own. Uncharacteristically a smaller version too.
- Every time I hear, "pint" I think of Pippin saying, "they come in pints?!"
- So, here in good ol Austria, when we go to an US/UK/Irish pub and order a pint we always get 0,5L and for a 1/2 pint we get 0,33L.
  
  Are half pints half the price of pints? I smell arbitrage.
- The US has their own version of all the imperial units. Also who uses pints except the Brits?
  
  India, I think. But that's the Brits' fault too obviously.
- America didn't really invent their own volume of measurements, they just didn't keep up.
  They used what the British used, then separated from Britain, and didn't update the units when Britain did.
- Metric nations havent kept the pint
  
  I just started looking up the different ways to order beers. Wow. Even if it's based on the metric system, each country really did go and reinvent the wheel.
  
  They haven't, but some still sell beer by pints. I can go to a store right now (well not right now, it's past 10 PM) and buy a pint sized beer and a 0.5l beer from the same company.
- Yes, I think the US pint is 16 Oz (2 cups), whereas the UK pint is 20 Oz (4 gills).

This is more like if you measured altitude by counting from sea level vs the center of the earth vs the top of Mount Everest or something
- Vs low tide vs high tide vs tidal average...
  I think there are 4 different "tallest mountains on earth" depending on if you are measuring from sea level, how you are measuring sea level, or if you are measuring from the base and the mountain and how you are defining the base of the mountain.

0 lbs/lg = Absense of weight.
0 inches/centimeters = Absence of size.
0 Kelvin = Absence of heat.
If something is 0lbs, 0 inches and 0 Kelvin: does it even exist? 🤔
- 0lbs is absence of weight, 0kg is absence of mass. Terrestrials, smdh...
  
  When avoirdupois pounds and pounds-force are used together I'm pretty sure it's more common to use 'lb' for avoirdupois pounds and 'lbf' for pounds-force.
- I mean, I think a neutrino is close to that.
  
  But what if they mutate?!
- what the fuck is lg, using TVs as a unit of weight?

But R and K agree on zero
- Rankine isn't pointing a gun at Kelvin because of this, but Kelvin is pointing one at Rankine because Rankine is an abomination that should not be

Meanwhile, Pi and the Fine Structure Constant watching the show, passing each other the popcorn.
- The best part about the fine structure constant is that it is not related to any other thing. It just is.
  It's a magic number that just emerges in physics.
  And it is not constant.
  Even though it is.
  
  Dimensionless numbers, not dependent on any mere mortal, subjective arbitrary unit of measurement like length (meters or yards or cubits - same difference) or time.
  Whether you are on Earth or a planet in Andromeda or a billion light-years away, if you study subatomic structure you WILL bump into the fraction 1/137. Just like you will in geometry with 3.1416.

At least Kelvin and Rankine agree on the zero, soooo...

FRRACK

This is why Celsius is the only SI unit that isn’t just wholly better than its imperial counterpart. Both F and C are fairly arbitrary, but in my view F has the slight edge by giving numbers 0-100 in most weather conditions across earth.
- Kelvin is the SI unit. Anyway also for the weather Celsius is clearer: Below 0 = snow, above 0 = rain. And Celsius at least has fixed points that can be recreated - if all thermometers and data on scales were lost we could easily recreate °C, but not °F.
  
  Ah well I should have said metric measurement then. It is part of the metric system, yes?
  If you can’t remember the number 32 then I guess. Personally I think it’s pretty bizarre to have negative temperatures all the time but whatever floats your boat.
  Regarding losing all thermometers and data… if you lost the definition of Celsius there would be no way to recreate it. This seems maybe more likely then your scenario.
- Yep Celsius is 1-100 for water and Fahrenheit is 1-100 for humans
  
  I've always hated this justification of Fahrenheit. For it to be a good argument, 50 °F would need to be the ideal comfortable temperature. But instead 50 is really fucking cold. 100 just isn't as hot as 0 is cold.
  
  Fahrenheit is 1-100 for humans
  Only if you grow up with it lol. Fahrenheit makes no sense to me
  
  how is fahrenheit 1-100 for humans? 100 i can sorta see, most people have a body temp around ~37°C (though still, there's about 1°C of variance..), but 0°F is very very cold and not exactly a temperature that many people encounter on a daily basis.
  i certainly cannot think of anything more relevant to humans than the freezing and boiling points of water, most people encounter them often and it's very easy to see when water starts freezing or boiling.
  If you see ice outside you know the temp is below 0°C, when the water in your pot is boiling you know it's at 100°C, it's super fucking easy.
  But the reference points for fahrenheit cannot intuitively be measured, 0°F has no obvious indicator, and 100°F can at best be vaguely inferred based on the air temps we can do work in, and even then you can really only reliably infer something like 30°C because that's generally when humans start feeling like it's too warm to do significant amounts of labour.

125 comments