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Florida ocean temperatures peak to almost 100 degrees amid heatwave: "You really can't cool off" (www.cbsnews.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/news@lemmy.world
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[–] 5 points 3 years ago (2 children)

Thinking about it... Isn't that exactly what the Celsius scale does just with reliable definitions about what "cold" and "HOT" mean?

Shower water with 38°C is hot, a bowl of rice at 38°C/100F is decidedly not "HOT". So the perceived convenience of the Fahrenheit scale is not applicable to everything, is it? How is it convenient then?

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

    O F is the freezing temperature of a saturated brine solution, while 100 F was the body temperature of a human. Yes, body temperature has been revised a bit, but the two points were chosen as stable points that anyone could access that would generally be unchanged by pressure changes, etc. Human homeostasis is quite good at keeping a temperature in a narrow range. Also, boiling is massively affected by air pressure. At 5000' elevation, boiling is approximately 202 F and continues to get lower as altitude increases. Lots of people live at higher altitudes. (Hi! I am one of them !)

    Edit: I was a little off on the temperature selected for body temp, but still pretty close: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    This is really interesting and I think there is a lot of support for the body temperature point. I was curious about whether the method of deriving 0F is insensitive to pressure changes and I can't find any evidence of that. But I don't know enough about chemistry or physics myself. Do you know, or have any details on where you learned this?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

    So I was a little off on the temperature chosen for the body, but the Wikipedia page has some good details: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit

    Re: freezing temperature of brine and pressure sensitivity, of course it is sensitive but we are talking about MPa-GPa of pressure, way beyond small pressure changes due to changes in altitude. You can get started by looking at physical chemistry of solutions if you are interested! A good place to start is "freezing point depression" and "boiling point elevation" of solutions. Also, single component phase diagrams: here it is for water.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago*

    It is convenient because they are used to it. That is all there is to it, and peace be to that.

    It only becomes silly when they begin to claim that F is better for "human temperature", because again it all comes down to what you are used to and celsius is just as convenient if you are used to that.

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