Science Memes

14857 readers

2464 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

851

temperature (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

385 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Both are equally arbitrary. You just have to know a handful of temperatures that you use in your day to day life either way.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Celsius being based on water makes it the most intuitive of the three imo.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hum... Around here water boils at ~96°C (some labs measure that). And it seems to not freeze at 0°C anywhere on Earth, as it's never pure water, with never an homogeneous freezing point.

It is repeatable, it's not very arbitrary, but "intuitive" doesn't apply in any way.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

You must be at altitude. That definitely makes a difference for the boiling point, but of course water freezes at 0. Impurities that you'll encounter in tap water, for example, will not have a large effect on freezing point.

Even if it was different by a few degrees, how does that make the scale any less intuitive?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Differences are neglegtable. 96°C is still going to kill you.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not really, it's just the one you're more familiar with.

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

That certainly does play a role, but it also just makes more sense.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

No it really doesn't. Knowing water freezes at 0 gives you no help in day to day life vs knowing 32 or 300 for water to freeze. You still have to be cautious driving above the freezing point. Your refrigerator sits a few degrees above 0 instead of 35 or 305.

Knowing it's 20 out only tells you useful information because you memorized what that feels like. You could just have internalized what 375 feels like.

Celsius is nice if you need to build a thermometer from scratch. That's not something people generally do.