this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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Both are equally arbitrary. You just have to know a handful of temperatures that you use in your day to day life either way.
Celsius being based on water makes it the most intuitive of the three imo.
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.
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?
Differences are neglegtable. 96°C is still going to kill you.
Not really, it's just the one you're more familiar with.
That certainly does play a role, but it also just makes more sense.
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.