Someone should set a new "shitamericanssay"
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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And a new USDefaultism while we're at it.
Ik it exists on reddit, but it would be nice to not make it around Americans.
I live in the United States and although I grew up here using Fahrenheit, I switched to Celsius almost 10 years ago. Part of my reason for switching was the rest of the world was using Celsius and every time they would mention the temperature, I had no clue if that was very hot, or just right and kept having to convert, so since there were not that many countries that used Fahrenheit, I switched. I still know what the comfortable range is in Fahrenheit, but now I also know in Celsius as I use it every day. Also, I no longer appear to be an old curmudgeon that is resistant to using a system the rest of the world already uses.
I did exactly this but with 24 hour clock lol
Can you set your thermostat using Celsius?
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Having the freezing point of water be at 0 instead of 32 just makes infinitely more sense.
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I had once heard described that fahrenheit's best feature is that you can go "oh, 1-100, 'sheesh, that's really cold!' to 'hoof, that's pretty hot!'" and yeah, while I was in the US where most temperatures (RIP Florida) change all the time, that sure was convenient.
However, living in a country that always stays in the 80-100 range, the 'oh fuck, the water's freezing' to 'oh fuck, the heat death of the sun is upon us' range is a MUCH more useful scale to knowing if we've been struck by some sort of apocalyptic event today
We should just start using Kelvin instead
As someone who moved to the US later in life, I learned to use fahrenheit because there's no way to talk to anyone about the weather or cooking otherwise.
If you need to do the same one day, don't bother trying to convert in your head. Just learn the numbers conversationally. Familiarize yourself with how the weather feels with the number the weather app shows.
I can't convert at all but I can use both C and F in conversation because one rarely needs exact numbers anyway. You learn the ballparks pretty quick.
I find the conversion between the two easy enough to do it my head.
This isn't exact but is close enough for conversations and 99% of my needs.
(Temp in F - 30) / 2
Examples
70F:
70F - 30 = 40
40 / 2 = 20C
10F:
10F - 30 = -20
-20 / 2 = -10C
The actual number is 21 / -12 but this is close enough for me 99.9% of the time
Isn't Fahrenheit a "feel" temperature unit anyway? Once you need precision (science), even Americans switch to Celsius/Kelvin.
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Thank you, this is a a great idea! I've found these common temperatures online, in case anyone wants to learn them:
| Description | Celsius (°C) | Fahrenheit (°F) |
|---|---|---|
| Absolute Zero | -273.15 | -459.67 |
| Freezing Point of Water (at sea level) | 0 | 32 |
| Average Room Temperature | 20-22 | 68-72 |
| Body Temperature | 37 | 98.6 |
| Average Summer Day | 25-30 | 77-86 |
| Heat of a Desert | 40-50 | 104-122 |
| Boiling Point of Water (at sea level) | 100 | 212 |
| Highest Recorded Earth Temperature | 56.7 | 134 |
Average Summer Day 25-30 77-86
See, that's the problem with these "Fahrenheit is more intuitive" arguments. They are catered to a very specific country with a very specific climate. For me, 25-30 ºC is an average late spring day.
It's intuitive to those who grew up using it. For me, Celsius is much more intuitive because people around me used it all my life and refer to common temperatures in Celsius.
So I think intuitiveness is very subjective and not a good criterion to judge a unit by.
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