• @Fleur__
    link
    English
    378 months ago

    Real metric supremacists be washing their hands with napalm after that handshake

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    288 months ago

    I’m assuming this is because the concept of absolute zero did not exist when most of these temperature scales were defined, whereas zero distance and zero weight were easily observable

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          4
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          conceive of the opposite

          Meh I don’t believe that they could avoid overshooting to negative weight

      • @_danny
        link
        English
        88 months ago

        How much water, by weight, is in an empty cup? Round to the nearest amount an average 17th century merchant could identify.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        68 months ago

        I guess in terms of an actual weightless object… Not… But if you have 2 equal weight items, call their combined weight 1 weight unit, take one away, that’s half a weight unit, take two away, that’s zero weight units.

  • @xkforce
    link
    English
    238 months ago

    Rankine is there twice.

    • @meco03211
      link
      English
      128 months ago

      And it shouldn’t have degrees like Kelvin, right?

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        258 months ago

        The Rankine scale is generally measured in degrees. That’s because it’s defined in terms of the Fahrenheit scale, which is also measured in degrees. i.e. 1 Rankine degree = 1 Fahrenheit degree.

        This is not the case for the Kelvin scale, which is defined directly in terms of thermal energy: 1 Kelvin ≈ 1.38*10^-23 J. Coincidentally (but not really of course) this amount of thermal energy is such that an increase of 1 Kelvin corresponds to 1 degree Celsius.

        This is rather pedantic, as you could easily define Rankine in terms of thermal energy as well. Some people do this and don’t say “degrees” in front of Rankine. Or, you could define the Kelvin in terms of the Celsius, and measure it in degrees.

        tl:dr Rankine has degrees, but for mainly historical reasons.

        P.S.: Kelvin actually also had degrees until 1968!

      • @captainlezbian
        link
        English
        78 months ago

        It does share a 0 with kelvin

        And F and C share a -44

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              38 months ago

              Maybe they got the 4 part mixed up from the old chem rhyme:

              Johnny was a chemist, but Johnny is no more, because what he thought was H2O was H2SO4

        • @meco03211
          link
          English
          38 months ago

          It’s actually -40. Not 44.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        68 months ago

        Not if it’s an absolute scale, no. And then it does actually agree on what 0 is with Kelvin too.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech
      link
      fedilink
      English
      7
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Someone probably incorrectly wrote Réaumur degrees. (Copy of Celsius but ×0.8 for some reason; somehow stays kinda relevant in 1770-1920 Europe)

    • linuxgator
      link
      fedilink
      English
      68 months ago

      °R refers to the Réaumur temperature scale which goes from 0 for freezing and 80 is the boiling point.

    • @chiliedogg
      link
      English
      58 months ago

      And had the same zero as Kelvin.

    • @chiliedogg
      link
      English
      38 months ago

      USGS uses imperial for a ton of publications. As a geographer, I had to get pretty comfortable with both standards.

  • @uis
    link
    English
    128 months ago

    Kelvin and Celsius are best buddies.

  • chaogomu
    link
    fedilink
    78 months ago

    Fun fact;

    Fahrenheit and Celsius line up at -40

    Fahrenheit and Kelvin line up at 575

    Those numbers are not particularly useful, but they are fun to know.

    • @EvokerKing
      link
      English
      28 months ago

      I was about to make the same comment. I got bored in math class with a graphing calculator and figured it out lol.

      • chaogomu
        link
        fedilink
        28 months ago

        I knew about the Fahrenheit and Celsius one as a kid (because the local weatherman pointed it out one winter) but I only looked up the Kelvin one a few years back.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        18 months ago

        It was invented by some scottish guy long before we had the means to measure things that would need it, and ever since that multibillion-dollar satellite thing fell to pieces even American scientists use metric units, we learn them in every grade level’s science class and our scientific community has this understandable atmosphere of regret that Congress was too lazy to completely kill off imperial units when they had the chance

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    48 months ago

    I’ve always been curious why 32 was chosen for the freezing point of water in Fahrenheit. or was there something else and did that just land at 32?

    it’s kind of a mystery and i love it

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      318 months ago

      Fahrenheit is actually a base-ten system, where 0° was the freezing temperature of a salt/water mixture used in laboratories in the 18th century, and 100° was supposed to be a human’s blood temperature. Another convenient perk of the fahrenheit system is that most European weather occurs inside it’s 0-100 range.

      Eventually Fahrenheit saw the scientific need to know the freezing and boiling point of plain water, but instead of adjusting his system, he just found those values within his system.

      • @Ambiorickx
        link
        English
        38 months ago

        The story I heard, and I don’t know if this is true or not, is that 100 isn’t just a human’s blood temperature, but specifically Mrs. Fahrenheit’s blood temperature.