#as is the fact that celsius is entirely definitionally reliant on kelvin now officially speaking

[brehaaorgana]

Objection!

I do think the "arbitrary" statement is unfair.

Fahrenheit is a European invented system where the scale of fahrenheit for water falls within a semicircle.

32 degrees (freezing point) and 212 degrees (boiling point) are exactly 180 degrees apart! Degrees on the fahrenheit scale are therefore 1/180th of an interval between the boiling and freezing points of water. It's literally degrees like in a half circle! Fun! Humans are just under 100 degrees internally (about 98ish). A lot of people keep saying the scale is based where 50 is median comfortable for humans and that's like...just historically and factually wrong.

Like in all seriousness, jokes jokes aside, fahrenheit was not actually developed solely to create a scale around human comfort. (Also that doesn't even make sense wtf. Just because I'm 98 degrees inside doesn't mean I'm not sweaty if it's only 95 degrees outside??) I keep seeing this in the notes. That's bonkers. It *did* include the average estimated internal temperature of a human at that time(!), but that was neither end of the scale (0-212) of fahrenheit. Also it still isn't. Also the average estimate that most people learned and was popularized as average body temperature was made after the scale was, and furthermore, we think even that is probably a little off. (This is true in both Celsius and fahrenheit — the fluctuations are normal and also the average is probably needing adjustment. I learned this when I went to the Mutter Museum and saw their collection of thermometers used in some of these early studies.)

not arbitrary, but mathematical! Not actually based on people at all! Still based on water! I feel like I should point out here that jokes aside the 0-100 scale is focusing on an average Fahrenheit range specifically for ambient temperatures and climate (where above and below are climate extremes). That's not what the basis of fahrenheit is. People seem to conflate these when serious and not joking.

Second objection! Americans aren't the only stubborn ones!

Celsius is centigrade so degrees were originally defined as 1/100th intervals between freezing and boiling water. However, the Celsius scale is no longer defined by either freezing water temperatures or boiling water temperatures! Yes, the scale is still the same. But it's not defined by water at all anymore.

Instead it was later tied to the Kelvin, and then further defined by the Boltzmann constant since 2019, which totally removes the property of water from the definition of a Kelvin.

Celsius is now wholly defined as being the temperature in kelvins subtracted by 273.15. Celsius no longer means anything without the Kelvin scale, so why do people bother cling to the Celsius scale at all? It literally is based entirely on Kelvin now anyways! You should just be using Kelvins for everything by now!

I'll have you know it's a chilly winter day of 258.15 Kelvin for me right now. The rest of the world is too stubborn to retire Celsius when it doesn't have any meaning outside of Kelvin anymore, so Americans aren't the only ones clinging to their old ways!

And if it was purely about intuition or what you were raised with, it will only take a single generation for everyone to get used to comfortably saying it's 258.15 Kelvin outside! Get to it, rest of the world!

I do still think the funniest line I keep hearing about the benefits of Fahrenheit is "nobody actually uses 100 degrees Celsius because at that temperature humans die," which is exactly why no one in Finland ever heats their sauna to a 100 degrees because we would simply immediately combust

Like, yeah, I know the reason I prefer Celsius and some prefer Fahrenheit is literally to do with what we're used to due to having grown up with a certain system, but the people confidently asserting that having 100 degrees Celsius set at such a high temperature makes it useless because no human would ever experience such a high ambient temperature is really funny