this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I think the reason people are saying that Fahrenheit "feels" right is because we use a base 10 number system. 1-10 and 0%-100% feel right to us because of this. If you somehow knew nothing about each temperature unit, but you did know base 10, I feel like Fahrenheit would be more intuitive. Obviously if you grew up with Celsius that would feel normal.

Disclaimer: I feel like the US needs to adopt metric already. It's so much better.

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

Use the same logic to use km/h then.

0 to 100 is better than 0 to 60.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

60mph/97kmh is not that fast, though. 90mph/157kmh is pretty fast.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

If you somehow knew nothing about each temperature unit, but you did know base 10, I feel like Fahrenheit would be more intuitive.

Would it though? Because it's not like people who didn't grew up with Fahrenheit can just intuitively use and interpret it. Maybe base ten is "more intuitive", but I'd argue not to any meaningful degree. Both scales have to be explained, experienced, and tied to personal reference points.