As an European I never understood what’s wrong with Fahrenheit besides no one else using it.
Unlike feet/miles/pounds there is no need to convert them to anything else so… why?
Water freezing/boiling point being 0 and 100 is neat but nowhere near being fucked like American distance units
Check out Chicago: where you can ask for directions and ‘a couple blocks’ could mean 500 feet or 3/4s of a mile, depending on what part of town you’re in .
I’ll still take a fairly straightforward grid over the spaghetti road map that many East Coast/European cities have.
American here raised on the Fahrenheit. My rational mind knows that we should all use SI and/or metric units for everything (using Celsius over Kelvin is a pretty easy sell). And there are other units of measure like energy that depend on how big a “degree” is, so your reasoning doesn’t even apply in all situations.
However, living in a temperate northern US climate where we get a full dose of all four seasons, it IS pretty damn neat that 0-100 F is basically the scale of the outdoor temperature I can expect to see in a given year. It can get colder than 0F or about -18C, but that is an insanely cold winter day. Likewise, it can get above 100F or about 38C, but that is an insanely hot summer day.
Insanely hot or cold for this area, of course. Somebody who lives in Dubai or Greenland might not think it makes so much sense.
Actually, for hot places like Dubai, a 0-50C scale for temperature extremes probably makes more sense!
edit: used to say “but that is an insanely hot winter day” which I guess IS true…
The evil trinity of American excellence:
Healthcare System
Banking System
Temperature Units
I didn’t know just how fucked up it all was until I moved to Canada.
Also:
As an European I never understood what’s wrong with Fahrenheit besides no one else using it. Unlike feet/miles/pounds there is no need to convert them to anything else so… why?
Water freezing/boiling point being 0 and 100 is neat but nowhere near being fucked like American distance units
Check out Chicago: where you can ask for directions and ‘a couple blocks’ could mean 500 feet or 3/4s of a mile, depending on what part of town you’re in .
I’ll still take a fairly straightforward grid over the spaghetti road map that many East Coast/European cities have.
American here raised on the Fahrenheit. My rational mind knows that we should all use SI and/or metric units for everything (using Celsius over Kelvin is a pretty easy sell). And there are other units of measure like energy that depend on how big a “degree” is, so your reasoning doesn’t even apply in all situations.
However, living in a temperate northern US climate where we get a full dose of all four seasons, it IS pretty damn neat that 0-100 F is basically the scale of the outdoor temperature I can expect to see in a given year. It can get colder than 0F or about -18C, but that is an insanely cold winter day. Likewise, it can get above 100F or about 38C, but that is an insanely hot summer day.
Insanely hot or cold for this area, of course. Somebody who lives in Dubai or Greenland might not think it makes so much sense.
Actually, for hot places like Dubai, a 0-50C scale for temperature extremes probably makes more sense!
edit: used to say “but that is an insanely hot winter day” which I guess IS true…