Whatever your grew up with will always seem more intuitive for most people. But given that I grew up with Fahrenheit, the whole “0 is cold as fuck, 100 is hot as fuck” thing works for me.

I know someone who knows both "natively" and celsius is much more logical to them because 1. kelvin has the same steps as celsius so for any science its much easier 2. freezing is 0 celsius so for weather(the thing you use temperature most commonly for) its really useful. Same with cooking.

I grew up in Canada, but in a temperate climate area on the border with the US. Winter? Use Celsius. Summer? Use Fahrenheit. For me Celsius makes a lot more sense right around 0C. After about 15C my brain switches over and starts using Fahrenheit. I like the Fahrenheit scale from 60-100F for gauging the summer months. The Celsius scale isn't granular enough. It feels like there's a big difference between 18C and 22C versus the comparable 64F-72F. But I also was taught early a quick and dirty conversion. C to F, double and add 30. F to C subtract 30 and divide by 2.

So humans feel cold at 0F and hot at 100F? I dont think thats true. Humans start quickly dying at something around 32F and 180F. Fahrenheit is complete nonsense. It has nothing to do with humans. And considering humans are mostly water Celsius seems a much better fit.

Same.

Not to mention that the 0-100 range thingy really depends on local conditions. I mean, depending on where you live, there are parts of the scale you'll never use.

I've never in my entire life lived in a place where the lowest temp got anything close to 0°F.

My range of values is more -5°C - 45°C, or 23F - 113F.

23F for me is already fucking cold, and 100F is nowhere near fucking hot anymore (thank the entire humanity for climate change).

So whichever scale, for me they're still just a bunch of numbers. But at least Celsius is used in "science, bitch!"

It makes sense that you find the system you grew up with to be more intuitive, but I grew up with fahrenheit, and I think you've misunderstood the assertion a little bit.

The older observation that this meme is riffing off of is that 100°C is the point at which water stops being sloshy and starts being steamy, whereas 100°F is the (much fuzzier) point at which humans stop moving around and start decomposing.

The Kelvin addition muddies things because 100K isn't really significant.

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.

Where I live the weather varies between -5 to 95. That's pretty close to a 0-100 scale which is universally understood. It's almost like metric for the human experience.

Fahrenheit was not an entirely arbitrary choice: it was defined based on two points of reference that could be measured at the time: the freezing temperature of an ammonium chloride brine is used as 0, and the best estimate for the average human body temperature is set at 96.

Over time, as the freezing point and boiling point of water at sea level atmospheric pressure proves to be more accurate reference points, the Fahrenheit scale was adjusted to provide exact conversion to Celsius.

At least personally I think the 0 to 100 scale with the average global temperature being somewhere in the mid 50s I think makes sense. Sure there's some people in warmer places and some on colder places that will say 0 and 100 farenheit aren't that bad but for people in a more temperate environment it works as a good scale. But yeah I do agree at the end of the day it is whatever you grew up with and it doesn't really matter that much. It's just that for temperature there isn't as concrete of a reason to switch to metric compared to lengths and weights.

Fahrenheit measured human body temperature (which he thought was a constant) and called that 96 degrees. We now know normal body temperature is about 98.6 degrees F, but back then, his instruments weren't as accurate. The number 96 was chosen for its divisibility. It has many divisors (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24, 32, 48, 96), making it easier to mark subdivisions on the thermometer.

It's a scale partly defined by human body temperature, which is, I think, the point.

I group up with F, I find it far easier to understand. Celsius is slightly less random, but someone still arbitrarily decided it should be 0 to 100 for the liquid state of pure H2O at sea level. It could have been based on any other number of ranges.

Of course it's all pretty much arbitrary. But I think the point was more "celius puts the scale of heat levels of water heat from 0 - 100, farenheit puts the human feelings scale of heat from 0 - 100"

A useful way to think about it (and I think what the OOP is saying) is to think about it as a scale from 0-100. Where 0 is like the coldest humans can deal with and 100 is the hottest humans can deal with. Obviously this isn't strictly true (it gets to like 115 in death valley) but as an imperfect generalization it's pretty useful.

Ssshhh. Just give it to us. We Americans don't have much else left

Yeah it’s less human based than Celsius since humans survive equally on the sides of 0 (-40 to 40)

100 F is roughly a human's body temp. (Actually 98.7 avg, but close anyway)

0 F is goddam cold. (This one's pretty arbitrary ngl)

That probably isn't very helpful.

Fwiw, Celsius isn't much better if you didn't grow up with it. 0 C is pretty cold, 100 C can give you severe scalds. The actual range the people will encounter in weather in their day-to-day lives is all over the place regardless.

Perhaps we are destined to stay divided