this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 172 points 1 month ago (6 children)
[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Even a broken clock is right twice day.

[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] Vuraniute 23 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Even a stuck digital clock is right once a day.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

When it's stuck, yes. When it's broken and the display is of welll...

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago
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[–] [email protected] 85 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

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 (??)

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago

Same with 574.59°F = 574.59K

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Good thing °R and °RA aren’t pointing guns at each other

Neither are °F and °R nor °K and °C

This is almost artfully done

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

°R and °Ra are the exact same thing (??)

I think °R is supposed to be Réaumur

[–] [email protected] 79 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Imagine if some distance measuring system decided their zero was at like 10 feet.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 month ago

Let me just shorten this down 8 feet

welds on an extra 2 feet

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If using log scale, 0 is at -∞

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

According to Wikipedia Rankine is properly used with the degree symbol, but sometimes is not by analogy with Kelvin.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

At sea level. Welcome to La Paz, where the triple point is made up and the freezing point doesn't matter!

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

does you scale change as Earth warms?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

People live in -70c (-94f) weather? How the fuck do they do that?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Never heard about °R and °RA before this meme

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

From what I can gather, R and Ra are the same thing?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

They are. The post could swap one of them out for Re or Rø instead and it would work, though

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Comparing arbitrary degrees to absolutes. Notice K is the only one without the degree symbol...

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Would Rankine not be an absolute?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

It is, but like everything imperial, it is cursed. So it still has a degree sign by convention despite being an absolute scale

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago (7 children)

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"

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

It's not limited to 100 steps. The decimal system gives you infinite granularity.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (11 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Every time I hear, "pint" I think of Pippin saying, "they come in pints?!"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (8 children)

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? 🤔

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Meanwhile, Pi and the Fine Structure Constant watching the show, passing each other the popcorn.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

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