this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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Science Memes

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Burning Up (mander.xyz)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The freezing point of water is very important to weather, and requires prior knowledge of the arbitrary number 32.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Is it? Only pure water will actually freeze at 0c. Rain, puddles, lakes, etc aren't all that pure... And we're talking about ambient air temps here. The air can be below freezing and it can still rain. And you can get snow/hail above freezing...

Knowing the freezing point is just one factor. Knowing it's generally around 30F is pretty much always close enough (not that remembering 32 is actually very difficult)

Edit: also water only freezes at 0c if it's at sea level... I really don't think 0°=freezing is the huge advantage that celcius stans think it is.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

yeah, and let me know how accurate our weather models and prediction systems are. Can you calculate accurately how much the temperature in a specific part of the atmosphere will drop to a large updraft?

What's that? This is literally an entire career field of study and development? Oh that's weird.

Also the only real time this is relevant, is when things that have this weird property called thermal mass get below freezing, it's snowing in 30f weather? That's not sticking, the ground is too warm. or the sun will literally just melt it even if it is cold enough. Water? You mean that weird thing called like, a lake or river? Those get below freezing, without actively freezing, lakes won't even drop that much in terms of temperature, aside from the surface level. The surface may freeze, but even that is pretty variable.

Also yes, it's the arbitrary number of 32, so is literally every number though. We have 2 numbers to remember, you also have 2 numbers to remember, god forbid you have like, a password, or a passcode, or like, a numbers based lock somewhere. Humans have never been known to be good at memorizing short strings of data.

like idk how to tell you this, but, it's not that big of a deal?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Okay so fahrenheit has a well-defined high and low, but an arbitrary freezing point of one certain chemical. All other chemical freezing points are arbitrary.

Celsius has an arbitrary high and low, but a well-defined freezing point of that same chemical. All other freezing points are arbitrary.

If your motivation is to minimize the amount of arbitrary values you have to memorize, fahrenheit is the clear winner.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The zero C is freezing and 100 C is boiling, so not really arbitrary.

But it's pretty hard to define a scale that has intuitive, round numbers for everything we might care about.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You're correct. In a lab setting, 0C and 100C are not arbitrary.

In the weather forecast, they are.

Which ties into your final point, it's hard to define a scale that is best for everything, which is exactly what I've been saying this whole time. Fahrenheit is better for some things, Celsius for others.

The only reason people in this thread are saying otherwise is because for some reason they've tied up some significant part of their self-worth into their belief that "lmao DAE fahrenheit bad amirite??1?", and they mistakenly believe that those of us that understand nuance are trying to belittle or disparage them in some way. I assure you, we are not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

0C and 100C are not arbitrary.

well i mean technically, the only reason they aren't arbitrary is because the mean something, the numbers arent significant, it's what they represent, which is the boiling/freezing point of water.

The only reason people in this thread are saying otherwise is because for some reason they’ve tied up some significant part of their self-worth into their belief that “lmao DAE fahrenheit bad amirite??1?”, and they mistakenly believe that those of us that understand nuance are trying to belittle or disparage them in some way. I assure you, we are not.

i'm seeing people put very little thought into the things they're saying, i just recently posted a comment covering a few of those things in this thread. For some reason europeans seem to just get absolutely brainfucked when presented with the concept of a unit system that isn't metric, it's like your literal entire lives are built upon the concept of 0 10 100 scaling, and you can't consider literally anything outside of it.

Now maybe i'm being a little hyperbolic here, but US peeps pretty well understand that we could just "be using celsius" that's not really a wacky concept or idea here. Celsius peeps really seem to think that if they had to use fahrenheit, they would probably die from accidental over-consumption of water, somehow. And in their defense, a lot of our shit is kinda fucking weird. But again, it's really not that bad.

at least, this has been my experience from the various threads i've been in on this topic over time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

It’s not like the weather depends on the boiling point of formaldehyde…

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The 0 in Fahrenheit was based on nothing and the 100F was supposed to be human temperature but it is off by some degrees

The water is not an arbitrary temperature, the weather is water dependant, at 0C the water will freeze and you get snow/ice instead of rain

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

0°F is when the ocean freezes

100° F was human body temperature, later revised somewhat with better measurements and a decrease of parasites . The average person in those days in London had a slightly higher body temperature than today

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

0F is not ocean freezing, is the freezing temp of a brine mix that he chose arbitrarily (some think that he chose that temp because it was close to the coldest his town had ever been and he used it to calibrate the scales of his thermometers)

FYI, the ocean freezes at around 28F

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Oceans freezing also depends on currents, and mixing of the water from the surface. 28° will freeze water in a room.

This is why often the ocean is not frozen at much lower temperatures.

I’m not at all cognizant of how 0 was decided