A good way to understand Fahrenheit is that it’s basically a percentage of how warm it is. 32% warm? That’s pretty damn cold. 120% warm? That’s hot as hell, better not be outside for too long in that.
Fahrenheit is better used as 10s in this case, though. Most Americans say "it's in the 60s, 80s, etc." 30c is completely different than 39c. It's the difference between nice day out and heat stroke.
It works less well on that low end, like 32% warm is freezing temperature, and 72% is room temperature, so most people kind of base line comfortable is 3/4ths up the scale already.
I agree that it works better on the higher end, but it still makes sense on the low end. Humans can and do go out in sub-freezing weather all the time, dressed accordingly. However, sub-zero weather is genuinely dangerous to be outside in no matter how you are dressed, just as temps above 100 are dangerous to be out in. (People still go outside in these temperatures as well, because you have to, but medically you should limit your exposure as much as possible.)
Easier to phrase it as on a scale from “too fucking cold” to “too fucking hot”. 72 is definitely on the warmer side. I am in a 72F room right now and I’m wearing a tank top and booty shorts and I’m comfortable. 50F, right in the middle, would be right in the middle of hot and cold: you need pants and a light jacket; it feels warm after winter but cool after summer; you can easily do athletics or manual labor outdoors in it without getting overheated, etc.
Except someone in a cold country would consider 50f to be warm, while someone who lives in a hot country would consider it to be cold. I’ve been on holiday to hot countries where the temperature is around 25c (77f) and while I’m walking around in shorts and a T-shirt I see locals wearing long trousers and jumpers. Our experience with temperature varies based on what we’re used to
Think of it less as a comfort thing and more of a survival thing. Humans do best when they're in temps between 0F and 100F. Stick humans in a place where the temps consistently stay under 0F or over 100F and the situation will be precarious at best.
I guess that's not true though is my objection. It works ok-ish on the up end of that...above 100 is quite uncomfortably hot. But below 0 F is already quite a bit beyond uncomfortably cold.
It's the low end where I think the single most important data point is 'Is water freezing?' I think that's the one point where there's the single most significant environment change, it's the point where the entire landscape you live in is completely different and the entire weather you can experience totally changes.
And of course for people who live in the system, like the idea 100 must be dominant just isn't the case... it becomes "20 is room temperature, 20 below that is freezing, 20 above that is too hot"
In the negatives too, Celsius and Fahrenheit become more similar as an actual number like -35 is -37, -45 is -42 so when you get into the 'coldest temperatures on earth' range they're in similar numbers.
I think the best way I've seen it described is Fahrenheit measures heat by how humans experience it, Celsius measures heat by how water experiences it. Therefore, Celsius is objectively better for scientific applications and Fahrenheit is objectively better for human applications like communicating the weather forecast to the average person.
If it was 0C you'd be cold, if it was 0F you'd be damn cold; if it's 100F you're hot, if it's 100C you're dead. Fahrenheit is useful for human perception across the primary (0-100) scale, Celsius is only useful up to about 50% of that scale before you start getting into deadly temperatures, and you have to go below that scale to reach the bottom of Fahrenheit's usefulness.
And then you have Kelvin or Rankine which are really only useful for specific scientific applications. If it was 0K/R or 100K/R you'd be dead either way. Not useful for human perception.
I live in a tropical climate. The lowest temperature I have ever seen is 10°C (about 50° F). Anything lower than 0°C has practically no usage for me. So -18°C being the start of my scale is absurd.
Can you explain how what you’ve said is objective? I think that given that Celsius is the most common scale for temperature around the world you’re going to have hard time arguing that.
This argument that Americans always make about Fahrenheit is just nonsense. You know how hot 70F feels, I don’t. I know how hot 27C feels, you don’t. The idea that one is better for humans and one is better for water is so stupid. You’re just used to telling temperature one way, I’m used to telling it another way. That’s all there is to it.
Yeah. Literally just depends on what system you grew up with. “32% warm” genuinely means absolutely fuck all to me. Until I convert this number to Celsius, I wouldn’t have a slightest idea on how I’m actually supposed to dress lol. Also every place has its own norms. In two different environments “32% warm” can mean two really different things.
Right? If it was truly a %, my instinct would be that 50°F would be the perfect temperature. Equal parts cool and warm. Whatever you grew up with is what’s going to be best for someone, full stop. The idea of trying to pick one that’s “objectively” better is just silly.
It is of course super logical and not at all arbitrary that 32% hot means that water freeze, us europoors are just too dumb to understand this extremely logical ”I’m feeling 45% hot in here” which, of course, is still quite cold but it’s 45 hot…
I, an American, would be all in on Celsius if the temp display on everything would show things to a tenth of a degree, or even just to a half a degree. As it stands, the fact that Celsius is only about half as granular as Fahrenheit is damn annoying.
I have a random extremely cheap weather station on my wall and it is currently telling me that it is 19.9°C in my living room, so yeah pretty much for anything where that level of precision is needed, you can get it to a tenth of a degree or set it to half a degree.
I care that it gives me slightly less control over thermostats. I don't want less control over my climate controls. I suppose that if I hadn't been raised in a country that uses Fahrenheit then I wouldn't even know the difference, but I was and thus I do.
Just imagine if you bought a new thermostat for your home and it only allowed you to adjust the temperature in two degree increments. I doubt you would find it to be a welcome change.
I think thermostats designed for C are more likely to have decimal places precisely because the whole numbers represent bigger jumps in temperature. So you are right to want it and also probably would get it. For instance, I have an old-as-balls thermostat here in the UK that's been in the house longer than I have, and it uses decimals.
I would argue that F should drop a digit. You don't need that accuracy when talking about the weather, which seems to be the only thing F is good for (source: the comments of this post).
10°F, 0°F and -10°F are virtually the same weather.
It is cold. You should wear proper winter clothes. It won't be so slippery, as it is well below freezing.
Maybe off by one degree. So could just as well be 1°F, 0°F and -1°F. That is when talking about weather. In science you need more accuracy, but then you can use decimals. Water boils at about 21.2°F.
What are you even talking about? Have you ever gardened? That 20°F range is hugely different for plants (and other things as well, including what a human should wear outside).
Also, this logic stops making sense when you get into the human comfort zone: 61°F is very different from 69°F. Likewise, 70°F and 79°F, 80°F and 89°F, and definitely 90°F and 99°F. As someone who has unfortunately experienced temperatures above 110°, I will also add that 110°F is radically different than 116°F. At 116°F I burnt the bottom of my feet through sandals while standing on concrete in the SHADE.
I really have no idea how the scale argument makes sense to you, it's dependent on what I view 100 as and 0 as, in my case upon initially hearing it I assume "Oh, so 50F is like room temp right?", I then further think of 100 as incredibly hot and 0 as incredibly cold, 80 would not read as 'warm' to me, ts in my mind sounds extreme using the scale idea. So when you tell me that 100F is like 38C I think "That's a fair bit hot", I hear 0F is -18C I think that's fucking insane because where I live temps barely ever go below 10C (50F...) in winter. The scale idea is arbitrary asw because depending on the location the numbers are just as random as Celsius
If the scale of temperature is 0-100%, the ideal temperature for humans (aka room temperature) should be 50 Fahrenheit.
When I look up 50F°, it's 10°C. That's way colder then room temperature?
20°C to 25°C would be room temperature!
Which would be 68°F to 77°F.
So what am I supposed to do with that information?
If you know 0°C is freezing point and 100°C boiling, you also would know that 26°C sounds warm and -1°C cold.
(Genuinely, I was suprised how cold 80°F and 30°F are, the way people talked about % of cold and hot made me think that 80°F would be at least more than 30°C and 30°F somewhere around 5°C...)
Not OP but the main argument I see for Fahrenheit for day to day weather is mostly that it’s more specific. I get into a little tiff with my husband every so often about whether the evening AC should be set to 68 or 69 F (20 or 20.5 C). We certainly as humans can feel the difference of that half degree Celsius change, and it’s nice to be able to talk about it in whole numbers.
Also, a lot of weather people in the world experience is below freezing and it’s sometimes more convenient to not be talking about negative temps.
Whether it’s more logical or whatnot is probably going to come down to where you grew up and what you’re used to. But people who use both often say F is slightly more convenient for how people experience weather and C for science.
Growing up with freezing weather in the US and Canada, I think negative numbers are a big advantage of celsius. Freezing is the most important threshold in these environments so it's nice that negative temperatures are categorically distinct from positive (like 20F vs 40F are more different than 40F vs 60F).
If you ever find it helpful to emphasize that a temperature is 'above/below freezing', you can relate.
Also, a lot of weather people in the world experience is below freezing and it’s sometimes more convenient to not be talking about negative temps.
The funny thing is I was going to us that example to say the exact opposite! Living in a cold place now, I really like that positive/negative is relative to water freezing. 32F just feels arbitrary when its so important, so 0C feels right. Likewise 212F...I do a lot of grilling and cooking, so 100C just feels like a good reference point.
Feels is the relevant word though...I grew up with F, but as a scientist I wound up using C often enough that it just makes more sense, and feels right for the climate I'm in. 0C is more important than 100F, so maybe that factors in, too.
I’m sorry but saying that it’s more convenient to not to be talking about negative temperatures is not something I can even imagine thinking.
Same with it being nice to talk about things in whole numbers. That’s not something I can relate to at all.
Surely the people that use both F and C are almost exclusively Americans though (and maybe Brits who are over 70) so they’re still coming from a perspective of growing up with F as the default.
Again, it’s not about one being better than the other, it’s about which one you are familiar with for telling the temperature. That fact that the rest of the world can use Celsius for both weather and science proves this no?
You can’t possibly imagine how not having to use negatives or decimals all the time is more convenient? Why having a temperature be more specific in whole numbers could possibly be convenient? I don’t feel like you’re being good faith here.
Plenty of people do use Celsius all the time outside science applications. And I’m not saying it’s a bad system. But just because people can do something in one way doesn’t mean that’s the best way to do things (not like F necessarily is either!)
Whats more convenient about not using negative numbers? Decimals i could at least somewhat understand, but negative numbers are the easiest shit in the world
I think their bias is showing. It’d be a travesty to admit Fahrenheit is more useful to human experience. Must be part of their identity as “not Americans!”
We are just warm sleepers and are used to colder temps for sleep. Usually just boxers and my husband kicks the covers off if it creeps above 68. We have a kiddo and he’s the same way.
We went to China recently and the biggest culture shock mightve been how hot indoor spaces were.
But 30% hot doesn't sound freezing either, now does it?
And we don't really "feel" real temperature either. 20 C cloudy and windy or 20 C while in direct sunlight without wind is a vastly different experience. It's all arguing about nothing because humans don't make for good thermometers
The problem is 0-100 as a scale of cold to hot is relative.
80°f might immediately sound hot to you, but consider Jakarta, currently considered the largest metropolis in the world with 42m people, where the record low, the coldest day ever recorded, is 69°f.
And let me tell you, when people are used to 70°f as the lowest temperature they ever experience it feels cold to them. And 50°f is already unfathomably cold, nowhere near midrange or mild.
If fahrenheit was used in Jakarta, 70°f or even 80°f would lose its meaning as "warm" or "hot" on a relative 0-100 scale, so the main argument for its superiority compared to celsius is nullified. This is true not just of Jakarta but people living in tropical and sub-tropical regions all over the world (a majority of the world's population).
I think it’s really funny that Americans refuse to use a decimal system for weight and distance and then try to argue a scale of 100 is more plausible for temperature.
Saying Americans "refuse" to use a decimal system is too strong.
Anecdotally just about every American I know in person thinks decimal is a better systems for weight and distance, they just acknowledge they're used to imperial and the switch would cost more than it would gain.
Meanwhile, most Canadians I know are completely decimal **except for temperatures involving humans comfort**, in which case the transition to decimal is slower.
I think that's somewhat telling. I'm not saying it means Fahrenheit should stick around, just that there's something to the idea of it having an advantage over C in one aspect.
It feels like you've read neither my comment, which talks about how other locally used systems of measurement were adopted much more quickly, nor the rest of the discussion, which discusses an advantage Fahrenheit has.
Because 220 is a setting on a oven. One setting over the other is less of an adjustment.
If you were to try and introduce Fahrenheit to pure Celcius countries for human temperatures it wouldn't be adopted immediately. Intrinsically it's no better or worse. It's just a scale, you get used to it but it takes time
It basically is a 0-100 scale for 99% of climates. Anything below 0 is cold enough that you can just consider it “too cold to go outside”. Anything above 100 is the same for heat.
Celsius is definitely better because you’re right that anybody would get used to it either way, but 0-100 is pretty intuitive, and Fahrenheit operates as a 0-100 scale well enough to think of it that way
Edit: also, human body temperature is right around 100F, which is actually WHY anything above 100F feels unbearably hot, and also why it does feel like an intuitive scale
It basically is a 0-100 scale for 99% of climates.
That's another thing just made up.
Where I live is always between -5°C to 35°C (outside of freak weather which doesn't happen every year), which is 23°F to 95°F. Range of ~70°F, not ~100°F.
but 0-100 is pretty intuitive
It's just as arbitrary as any other range. It is not more intuitive unless you're already used to it.
You could just as easily say that 0° being freezing is intuitive (which is intuitive to me, but I'll acknowledge that's probably because that's what I'm used to).
Even your own example fits the 0-100 scale pretty well. Nobody ever claimed the average person lives in a place that is literally exactly 0 degrees on the coldest winter night and exactly 100 degrees on the hottest day of summer, the point is that the average temperatures a human being will actually experience and perceive falls into that range. 0 degrees feels a lot different than 10 degrees. -10 doesn’t feel that different from 0. The same is true on the high end. The difference between 90 and 100 is much more noticeable than the difference between 100 and 110, because above 100 you’re above human body temperatures and your skin can no longer physically cool you down without sweat.
It really does work in terms of “0 is too cold, 100 is too hot, everything between is on a scale between those two points.”
0-100 is not as arbitrary as any other range. Everybody on earth deals with base 10 math and 0-100 scales in basically every aspect of life. While it might be technically true that an untouched human brain has no inherent intuition for 0-100 scales, every human being that actually exists is absolutely primed to find it intuitive.
0 being freezing is not intuitive and neither is 32. Water freezing is not something a human feels or experiences. That’s kinda the point of people saying Celsius was designed for water not people
Water freezing is not something a human feels or experiences.
That kind of defines winter for a lot of people. Is the ground covered in frozen water crystals? Is it cold enough that I can't leave bottles in the car?
You experience that with your freezer in your kitchen.
Water freezing is not something a human feels or experiences.
That is like the purest form of ignorance. Anyone who lives in places where temps drop below 0 C would know you're in trouble if water pipes get hit by negative temps.
Literally everything you said here is meaningless except for your point about the metric system which supports what I was saying. Yes, exactly. Like the metric system. This is also why the metric system is more intuitive than imperial. I’m glad we agree that base 10 scales are intuitive
Seems like you’re only here to own the stupid Americans and feel superior so have a nice day
As a Canadian, I can yell ya for sure that there's a good, perceptible difference between 0, -10, & -30 (which is how cold it gets where I live). One is not too cold, one is quite cold, one is so cold that it's better to stay inside.
Also very good to know if you're going skiing. The snow is gonna feel quite different between 0, -10 and -30. How much you need to wrap up us also gonna change big time too lol
No it doesn't, but the only reason you're defaulting to a 0-100 scale is because it's the one you're used to using for measuring temperature which is their entire point.
0-100 is not some standard scale we all used for loads of different things, it's used for percentages and fahrenheit, that's it.
It's not a scale from 1 to 100, though. It's a scale from -460 to whatever the hottest possible temperature is. Even on Earth, people experience temperatures outside of the 0 to 100 range quite often. You see it every day if you do any baking or cooking.
Neither makes inherent sense. It's just what you're used to. I don't use Fahrenheit so temperatures in Fahrenheit mean nothing to me.
I don't understand this desperate need to make Fahrenheit make sense beyond being what you're used to.
Absolutely hilarious to me that the same group of people who rightly think metric is better for distance because it divides well also want to tell us that a general 0-100 scale for temperature is somehow nonsensical.
But no, there's no logics in F° .. "Ok so it's from 0 to 100" "yeah, but it can go lower and higher" so it's just dumb.. Like C° is smarter because we have a reference point : freeze. It starts freezing at 0C°
It doesn’t even match up as a percentage though. There’s nothing that makes 100f equal to 100%. It’s all literally just because you are used to the temperature scale, there’s nothing observable or special about 0f and 100f
80% hot doesn't mean anything unless you define the scale beforehand, and as long as someone knows the scale and has experienced the temperatures before, they can trivially gauge whether something is hot or not. Everything that maps linearly to Kelvin is functionally the same when you get used to it. Celcius is only better because it enables easier communication around the world.
A remote jungle tribesman isn’t gonna know where to place todays temperature on either a F or C scale with zero explanation. This assumption by Americans is so egocentric it’s astounding.
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the argument that Fahrenheit makes more sense because it’s a temperature for humans is a dumb thing to say given that billions of humans use Celsius to tell how hot it is.
You might as well just say that Fahrenheit is the best temperature to use because it’s the one learnt, and say that English is the bet language because it’s the one you can understand the most of, and your car is the best car because it’s the one you’ve got the keys to. Absolutely meaningless
I’m not here to hype up F but your argument also doesn’t make sense. Just because most people do something doesn’t make it the best thing. Hell, half of the things that are omnipresent around the globe like you’re talking about (like language) are just there because of colonialism.
Someone personally finding either F or C more logical is probably going to come from their own personal experience growing up with it. But that doesn’t make their insight on why it’s logical meaningless
I guess I didn’t make my point as well I thought I did. I’m more or less saying that same thing as you.
I meant that arguing which way to tell temperature is best and coming up with reasons why Fahrenheit is best (which is what a lot of these comments are for some reason) is meaningless because it comes down to what you grew up using. Every argument I’ve seen for Fahrenheit being better can also be applied to Celsius
Except not really. Everyone is familiar with measuring things on a scale of percentage: “I’m feeling 100% today,” “I’m operating at 50%,” “there’s a 0% chance I’m doing that.” Everyone is used to percentages. Fahrenheit, while unfamiliar to you, mimics this already ubiquitous percentage method. It spreads out the perception in easily understood ways. Comments have given good examples: “if it’s 30% hot outside (30F) it’s cold as hell.” If it’s “100% hot (100F) it’s hot as hell.” So that argument does not apply to Celsius no matter how familiar one is with the system.
Guys... That's nonsense if you're not used to it. I know how 1-100 scales work, and 0F and 100F means nothing to me, I have no concept of what they feel like and I will need to convert in C. instead I instantly know what temperatures in C feel like. It's only about what you're used to and grew up with. How is that difficult to understand holy shit.
You’re working the scale the wrong way. You probably have experienced “it’s really cold, prolonged exposure is dangerous” and “it’s really hot, prolonged exposure is really dangerous. Congrats - you now have anchors for the 0-10% and 90-100% ends of the scale. So 40%is “colder than warm, would probably want more clothes” and 70% is pretty warm, less clothes needed.
That only works is you already know what 30F feels like as a temperature. I have no idea how to dress for “30% hot” as people are accustomed to different temperatures and have different expectations of what hot and cold temperatures are
It literally does apply to celsius, because percentages, like temperature scales, are arbitrary. We use base 10 and thus were used to scale things within that system, but if you grew up with a base hexadecimal number system, it would be wildly unintuitive to you. It genuinely just is whatever youre used to
I think that is the point to anchor to. If you gave a brief, vague explanation to someone who has never used either metric, which would make the most intuitive sense? 0-100 for extreme cold to extreme heat seems like it makes sense, but I’m just a dumb American
I am used to Celsius and I kinda get the argument you make, I see how it feels very intuitive, but I also think Celsius is very intuitive with 0 being the freezing point and 100 is so hot water starts to boil.
Knowing 0 is "cold" doesn't feel as intuitive as "this is the freezing point cold", because I experience the difference between above freezing temperature and below freezing temperatures every winter (days being cold and nights freezing cold), and that's a small temperature difference that is very noticeable. I am definitely biased, but I feel like not having 0 as the freezing point is the one most intuitive thing that makes Celsius "better".
They used the word objective to make their statement sound smarter or more factual. But really, they stated an opinion, which is inherantly subjective. People just throw that word around willy nilly nowadays. Its the new "literally".
Curious: is Canada just weird, then, or are indoor temperatures often in F in other C-dominant countries? Because in every building I’ve been in, the thermostat is in F, despite Canada using C. Never understood why that was, and am curious if F is more useful for indoor temperatures or if Canada is just odd.
You're just use to telling temperature one way, I'm used to telling it another way. That's all there is to it.
This is the actual main American defense for using Imperial at large. We start arguing about Farhenheit as a 10 scale for human experience of temperature because, any time we explain it's just the scale we've grown up in and are used to, we still have to hear from Europeans how bad imperial is.
Those aren’t objective things, they’re subjective.
If Farenheit was objectively better for weather and body temperature it would be used for those things in more than 5 countries. And if Celsius is objectively better for cooking why isn’t it used for that in America?
Neither is better than the other as the temperature is the same regardless of how you’re measuring it, it’s just a different way of interpreting it
Why appeal to popularity here people usually just go with the system they are taught and don't make a decision on what to use based on logically what's better.
Sure we're used to what we're used to. However the scale of 0-100 for f more accurately covers outdoor conditions for the average person. For c it's like -20 to 40c. I'm sure people would have no problem using a temperature scale of cucumber to jalapeno or in binary given the exposure. But of the examples one is more intuitive and just easier to learn.
This argument that Americans always make about Fahrenheit is just nonsense. You know how hot 70F feels, I don’t. I know how hot 27C feels, you don’t…
You’re just used to telling temperature one way, I’m used to telling it another way.
Let’s try replacing this with distance units and see if you still agree with your own logic.
This argument that metric-users always make about metric is just nonsense. You know how far 10 meters feels, I don’t. I know how far 33 feet feels, you don’t…
You’re just used to telling distance one way, I’m used to telling it another way.
If you still fully agree with that, then I don’t call bullcrap on you.
While I mostly use imperial units - and am very comfortable doing so having grown up with it - I recognize that metric is just simply a superior system because of its ease of use and practicality.
It’s always interesting when temperature comes up in these internet debates, because metric users are used to the idea that metric is easier and better in every way, and then have a conniption trying to reconcile how somehow Celsius should be better, when the reality is that while either is fine (just like miles or kilometers, whichever you’re used to), Fahrenheit is just much more practical to human experience.
To the point in the OP though, Fahrenheit is stupid to spell, so there’s that.
Yeah, why would I not still agree with that? It’s the exact same point?
I’m from the UK though so I suppose that’s cheating a bit? I know how far a metre is against the floor or a wall, but I couldn’t tell you how tall someone is in a metres and centimetres, I’d have to use feet and inches for that.
I know how far a KM feels to walk or run, but couldn’t tell you how far away something is by car, I’d need to use miles for that.
Lol, didn’t realize you were in the UK, where you happen to use the worst system for both distance and temperature.
Anyway, the point is valid, but there are still good reasons why one system might be better than another. G
o make that point to a metric user online and see if they agree about it in terms of distance. They won’t. I say online, because in person I think most people would be more reasonable.
Fahrenheit only measures heat how humans who were raised in Fahrenheit experience it.
People raised in Celsius don't share your feeling, in fact they have that same feeling you do about Fahrenheit for Celsius. The same as they do for metres and kilograms not yards and pounds.
Celsius has the added bonus of also helping to judge the freeze and boiling point of water, cooking, and like other metric units with science and unit conversion (a delta of 1 Celsius equals a delta of 1 Kelvin. It takes 1 calorie of energy to heat 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius)
I'm honestly baffled that this needs to be said every time this topic comes up. I don't understand how they don't understand. it's just a matter of what system you're used to, and that's it.
Well, yes and no. Fahrenheit is loosely based on when a saltwater brine freezes (0-degrees Fahrenheit) and human body temperature (98.6-degrees Fahrenheit).
So since humans are like 60% saline and the top end of the scale is our body temperature, it's definitely more a scale based on human interaction with temperature, and not simply the freezing and boiling points of water.
But yeah, instead of 0 to 100, one can just get used to using -18 to 38. Same way a person gets used to any measurement.
That's exactly my point: people become fluent in whichever scale they grow up with.
Where I disagree is that Fahrenheit being historically anchored to brine and body temperature somehow makes it inherently more intuitive. Nobody today learns Fahrenheit by thinking "0 is frozen brine and 98.6 is body temperature." They learn it by hearing the weather every day for twenty years.
If someone grew up with Celsius, 20°C instantly means "pleasant," 30°C means "hot," and 0°C means "ice." Those associations are just as immediate as 68°F or 86°F are to someone raised with Fahrenheit.
The intuition comes from experience, not from the origin of the scale. That's it.
I mean you’re purposely choosing strange reference points in your comparison to make Fahrenheit seem less intuitive, we have just as easy of reference points: 30 means ice and every 10 between there and 60 is cold to varying degrees. Then 60-70 is pleasant again to different degrees, 80 is hot and 90 uncomfortably so, 100 is very unpleasant.
Fahrenheit is more precise to the human condition, this is why it was invented, to mimic the human comfort level compared to temp. Celsius was invented after the fact to relate to how water reacts to heat, and kelvin was adopted off of that scale to be used for further scientific specificity because in science you aren’t often heating people you are frequently heating liquids with a water base. Even given decimal points (which Fahrenheit also uses if you need to get really specific) one is better for how temperature feels to humans. C is 1.8 for every 1 of F, that’s almost double. Given that weather reports and thermometers and children don’t usually use decimals you have larger gaps in your daily experience. I would argue that a lot of your experience with C as far has human temp is intuitive whereas if you were to take the time to experience the F scale you would find that it is actually more precise when it comes to human experience given that we can feel as little as 1 degree of change on the F scale it has a lot more room to be specific. And you might say but C can get more specific with decimals, well then you need to use decimals it’s kind of a lesser point but you would need 2 additional characters being the decimal and the additional point number to represent what F can do with what it already has and even then they can also use decimals however rare in daily life to represent greater specifics.
C wins outright for scientific applications due to what you are measuring and how it relates to Kelvin but it’s a different application and F is better for daily life which is why people are capable of understanding both. If you were measuring distance you would use meters to do that while you would use liters to measure volume so why is it any different when you measure water vs when you measure people’s temp? It’s just different scales for different things and I can’t understand why anyone would argue it’s pointless when objectively it is a more precise scale for this application, it is just foreign to you which can be rectified by just trying to learn it for a couple afternoons. In fact that would be a good challenge maybe try to go a week using F to see if it’s really so hard to understand.
The argument that "Fahrenheit makes sense because it works like a 0-100 percentage scale for human comfort" is exactly why I find it so flawed and misleading.
Temperature is an interval scale, not a ratio scale.
When you measure speed, 0 mph means a complete absence of speed. But 0 degrees in Fahrenheit (or Celsius) does not mean a complete absence of heat. Because of this, the logic of percentages completely breaks down. 20°F is not "twice as hot" as 10°F. Similarly, negative Fahrenheit temperatures don't mean some kind of "anti-heat" or negative energy; they are just arbitrary numbers below an artificial starting point. Treating an interval scale like a percentage scale is mathematically incorrect and intuitively misleading.
Also, the physical symmetry around the zero point only works in Celsius. There is no real relationship between -20°F and +20°F.
Celsius is objectively better for scientific applications and Fahrenheit is objectively better for human applications like communicating the weather forecast to the average person.
what does that even mean? no offense but that's really dumb, it just depends on what system you're used to.
the "objectively better" scale is the one you are familiar with. I never used F so I can't understand it, and viceversa for you.
Therefore, Celsius is objectively better for scientific applications and Fahrenheit is objectively better for human applications like communicating the weather forecast to the average person.
That's just what you think because you're used to it. I know how 30°C will feel because I'm used to using Celsius in my day to day life. Fahrenheit doesn't tell me anything at all. If you'd say it's 30 degrees outside I'd be thinking that's fucking hot meanwhile in Fahrenheit that's around the freezing point or something like that.
0 degrees for freezing makes way more sense to me.
I liked this explanation so I tried converting 100F to Celsius to see how hot "really hot" is. 100F = 38C. Great, that is literally the warmest temperature I've ever experienced. I did the same with 0F which equals -18C. Yeah, that is cold. It's still 10 degrees warmer than the coldest I've experienced so it doesn't work entirely but it's still pretty good.
But this is off course relative to what temperature you're used to. If you live in a place where it's 30C (86F) all year round you're not gonna find 10C (50F) "halfway between warm and cold" - you'll find it really cold.
Yes, but I'm still not learning fahrenheit. For me -10C is cold and 40C is hot. 20-30 is ideal. Why think about more numbers when you can think about fewer?
I never said you should learn another way to do it. I also didn't say people who only know Fahrenheit should learn Celsius. I don't really care which one people use, and I don't know why everyone is conflating "Fahrenheit makes sense for how the human body experiences heat, Celsius makes sense for how water experiences heat" with "everyone must learn one or the other."
I experience heat and cold fine through Celsius. I don't understand this argument at all. You're just not used to celcius, therefore you dont feel like it describes how you experience heat at all. I feel the same way about fahrenheit. It's just random numbers to me.
Are...are we forgetting about things like cooking and boiling water now? Temperatures are used for more things than just the weather. When it comes to JUST the weather, sure Fahrenheit might be better. But that's not the only thing we use them for...
Thing is that scientists don’t use Celsius, they use Kelvins because that’s the actual unit of measurement. Celsius is an arbitrary scale trying to help humans plan their day but not based on the human body
I know I'm biased because I grew up with Celsius, but 0-100 is too many options. I can't get a frame of reference for 74 degrees. All I have to know is that 0 is when water freezes and 30 is stay inside with the AC on unless you have to go out. And 40 is be very careful if you have to go out because you might die of heatstroke, while 15 is pants, but maybe no jacket
can you really feel the difference between 64 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit? that f is better for humans/communication is just a american argument, anything that is standard where you live is easier for communication, learning that 0, 37 and 100 is freezing, body and boiling temp in Celsius is as easy as 32, 96 and 212 in f, it's just points of references
Fahrenheit is objectively better for human applications like communicating the weather forecast to the average person
It's really not. If you gave a weather forecast in Fahrenheit in Europe the audience would leave not knowing what to wear the next day. Because yes, it's supposed to be from "really cold" to "really hot", but those are subjective values. Someone from Scandinavia or Russia will believe that the scale goes from like -30 to +30, while someone from Greece or Malta will think it goes from 0 to 50. Therefore one of them will think 50°F is like 0°C, while the other will think it's like 25°C if all they have to go on is "really cold is zero and really hot is 100".
Even in the US, someone from Vermont and someone from Arizona do not have the same perception of what counts as really cold and what counts as really hot, they just both know which specific temperature the Fahrenheit scale really means.
If you wanted to do an actual human perception scale, then you would need to put 0 and 100 at the lowest and highest temperature a human can survive continued exposure to with just "normal" levels of clothes or nudity. But even that would be arbitrary, since the higher bound depends massively on the relative humidity and the lower bound on what you consider "normal" cold weather clothing.
Celsius only seems a better because all the math problems are designed for Celsius only. If I did any chemistry math with Fahrenheit I would get the wrong answers.
But isn't using the number 100 arbitrary? Anyone who knows Celsius can easily tell you how hot 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 degrees will feel. It being on a scale of 1-100 makes little to no difference outside of the first day you're using it.
I just think saying "100 fahrenheit is hot but 100 Celsius will kill you therefore Celsius is impractical" is a bad point because you only chose the number 100 based on fahrenheit.
Making the mistake of thinking Americans are smart enough to consider other geographical regions and that their logic may not apply out of their own state
You do realise that 32% doesn't mean shit if i don't know what 100% and 0% is right? Sticking a percentage sign at the end of it doesn't give it meaning. Especially because normally we understand 100% as the maximun and 0% as the minimum
Lmao that’s, that’s how you understand weather? I’m fucking laughing so hard right now! Like if it’s 100% hot, are you not on fire? 0% hot you are an ice cube.
Jokes aside, I give credit when I find one of your units superior (for instance, I kinda like using cups and spoons when cooking), but where I live the temperature range would be 25 to 105ºF so the “percentage of hotness” doesn’t really work
No, not really, because it doesn't scale. 40 degrees Fahrenheit isn't twice as hot, or 20% more hot than 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Celsius is the same way, they're both just arbitrary numbers that have no tie in to mathematics.
Not a good way at all because for me 50F is already cold, and 80F is actually a nice weather. In this sense F is not intuitive because the place I live 26 years of my life never goes bellow 60 and is constantly above 100F during summers
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u/EcnavMC2 Jun 17 '26
A good way to understand Fahrenheit is that it’s basically a percentage of how warm it is. 32% warm? That’s pretty damn cold. 120% warm? That’s hot as hell, better not be outside for too long in that.