this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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Science Memes

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submitted 11 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] TheTetrapod@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I don't know if this'll help, but I find it interesting. Fahrenheit was designed to make creating thermometers easier. You pop your new thermometer into some ice water, call that 32, pop it in your mouth, call that 96 (human body temperature is actually 98.6, but these weren't the most precise instruments), and then you can just keep dividing the space between them in half until you get 64 degrees.

Obviously Celsius is more scientific and practical in modern times, but I think Fahrenheit is fascinating, if nothing else.

[–] eee@lemm.ee 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't understand your logic. I could just as easily change your text to say

Celsius was designed to make creating thermometers easier. You pop your new thermometer into some ice water, call that 0, pop it in boiling water, call that 100, and then you can just keep dividing the space between them in half until you get 100 degrees.

[–] TheTetrapod@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Not really. You get to 12.5 pretty quickly with 100 degrees. 64 is better due to it being a square of 2.

[–] Pok@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

How does that make it better?

[–] anguo@lemmy.ca 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's some weird logic there. Why 32 and 96? From what I remember, 100 was supposed to be human body temperature (but he had it wrong), and 0 was the coldest temperature he could achieve with brine.

[–] EtherWhack@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

To add, I remember being told (rumor?) the reasoning for the 100° body temp was that it was created before modern medicine and was supposed to be the avarage temp of the population given that being slightly febrile was supposed to be normal.

(I don't know how true this is as I don't really care about the imperial system and don't really feel assed to research it. Just relaying what I've been told)