I’ve seen it so many times because of the US, but it will never click.

Historically, on the Fahrenheit scale the freezing point of water was 32 °F, and the boiling point was 212 °F (at standard atmospheric pressure)

What the fuck dude… 32 and 212?

According to a German story, Fahrenheit actually chose the lowest air temperature measured in his hometown Danzig (Gdańsk, Poland) in winter 1708–09 as 0 °F, and only later had the need to be able to make this value reproducible using brine.[12][failed verification]

According to a letter Fahrenheit wrote to his friend Herman Boerhaave,[13] his scale was built on the work of Ole Rømer, whom he had met earlier. In Rømer scale, brine freezes at zero, water freezes and melts at 7.5 degrees, body temperature is 22.5, and water boils at 60 degrees. Fahrenheit multiplied each value by 4 in order to eliminate fractions and make the scale more fine-grained. He then re-calibrated his scale using the melting point of ice and normal human body temperature (which were at 30 and 90 degrees); he adjusted the scale so that the melting point of ice would be 32 degrees, and body temperature 96 degrees, so that 64 intervals would separate the two, allowing him to mark degree lines on his instruments by simply bisecting the interval 6 times (since 64 = 2^6).

Again, what the actual fuck? It’s just adjusted to the personal preferences of a dude with little account for the world.

  • 0F = -17C (coldest point in Danzig in 1708)
  • 32F = 0C (water freezing point)
  • 100F = 37.78C (human body temperature)
  • 212F = 100C (boiling point of water)

Makes no sense at all. And yet, some USAmericans like to parrot this reasoning

Early in the 20th century, Halsey and Dale suggested that reasons for resistance to use the centigrade (now Celsius) system in the U.S. included the larger size of each degree Celsius and the lower zero point in the Fahrenheit system; and claimed the Fahrenheit scale is more intuitive than Celsius for describing outdoor temperatures in temperate latitudes, with 100 °F being a hot summer day and 0 °F a cold winter day

What the fuck is a “hot summer day” and a “cold winter day”? That’s completely arbitrary. For some Brits 25C in summer can be “unbearable heat”. 37C may be the average summer day for some people around the equator. For some people in the North, -17C can be an average winter day with -40C being a “cold winter day”.

Is it US exceptionalism keeping Fahrenheit alive? Is it just tradition? In what world do 0, 32, 100, and 212 make sense as reference points?

Bonkers…

  • cooljimy84@lemmy.world
    0·
    6 days ago

    Uk born male here. I like that 0c is water freezing and 100 is water boiling, makes my logical brain happy.

    That said no one over here says 25.5C its either 25 or 26, which can be the difference between comfortable and uncomfortable. 77F to 78.8F (which you prob round up to 79F) is a bigger number difference.

    I also like cup of flour, not 100g (makes it sound more personal)

    • Theoriginalthon@lemmy.world
      0·
      6 days ago

      A cup as a unit of measure is based on volume, which is fine if you want like 2 cups flour and 1 cup water. But how big is a cup? Is the ingredient packed in there or loose filled? How big of a cake will it produce 1kg 2kg?

      Turns out it’s 8 fluid ounces, which is different depending on if you use imperial or US imperial. Then you find out that some US regulation defines a common household fluid ounce as exactly 30ml.

      • toynbee@lemmy.world
        0·
        6 days ago

        When I was a kid - like a little one, don’t judge me - I tried to teach myself how to bake. The first few things I tried to make were cakes.

        I didn’t know “cup” was a specific unit, though, so when I got to mixing in a cup of x or 2 cups of y or what have you, I pondered how that could make sense since our cups were of a variety of sizes. Eventually I mentally shrugged, figuring the people who wrote instructions knew what they were doing. I got a random cup out of the cabinet and used that for my first measurement, then put it in the sink with the other dirty dishes.

        When I got to the next step measuring things in cups, I didn’t want to use a dirty cup, so I went and got another completely differently sized cup. (I do want to reiterate that that seemed odd to me but I had decided to trust the process.)

        I also had a similar problem with tablespoons and didn’t have any clue what a teaspoon was.

        I have since learned many things about every step of what I described and even occasionally successfully made a cake or two. However, whatever I made that day was neither successful nor a cake.