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Chirp in Fahrenheit
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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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Everything except metric
There are lots of cursed options
https://xkcd.com/3001/
Wtf is going on with Dalton
It's a logarithmic scale based on Kelvin, but with constants shoved in there so 0 and 100 would agree with Celsius.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/459851/john-daltons-temperature-scale
I'm more confused about Galen. -4 to 4, 0 is "normal"? 50 c is "normal"? For what??
In Galen's scale, the 0 point is 22 °C, an alright room temperature, but the others are described too vaguely for us to convert. It might also be nonlinear. See the explainxkcd.com article
Ohh ok thanks for that link! So it is non linear. But not even a consistent curve like log, just if less than zero some factor, if positive a different one. Yuck.
That's the conjecture by Randall and Explain XKCD wiki editors. We can't tell either way, he just wasn't specific enough. All we know is that 0 on the scale is 22 °C and that it goes 4 steps up to "very hot" and 4 steps down to "very cold".
His degrees X would be a good way to show changes over long periods of time by simply graphing the annual adjustments.
I dunno, out of all the uses of metric system, Fahrenheit seems the more logical than the rest…
Metric temperature as Celsius is just as random as any other made up system of temperature measurement. Fahrenheit used the temperature of the human body to create his system, which makes a lot more sense than other systems.
I think our measurement of time for example is way more backwards than the fahrenheit system…
Kilometers and centimeters and distance totally makes more sense in metric but I am an American (USA American) and inches and miles are easier for me because of it ngl
huh? how is the freezing point and boiling point of water made up? how is the temperature of the human body better in any way?
The freezing and boiling points of water are by far the most logical reference points since anyone who wants to calibrate a thermometer will have access to water, and needs only go to the nearest ocean and bring some water to freezing and then boiling and making marks at each.
Celsius is the precise opposite of random.
They are both random and arbitrary. Using the human body as a standard is probably useful for medical purposes… using water as a standard is probably useful for other purposes…
Considering temperature itself is dependent on other variables like atmosphere, any temerature system is going to be random and arbitrary…
Kelvin at least has a theoretical bottom for the coldest something can get maybe? But still, Kelvin is also arbitrary because it uses Celsius as a standard, which is random and arbitrary…
Why would you use a complex molecule like water? Why not hydrogen? Why would you use one earth atmosphere as a standard? Why not a vacuum?
It’s all random and arbitrary, sorry if you can’t see it.
okay so yes you're not serious and just trying to get a rise out of people, great to have that confirmed.
What is 0°F in terms of the human body? I'm guessing that 100°F is supposed to be a normal human body temperature, but in reality that will vary from person to person and everybody I've met is usually 97-99 unless they have a fever.
In Celsius/Centigrade, 0° is the freezing point of water at 1 atmosphere of pressure, and 100° is the boiling point.
In Kelvin, 0 is absolute zero, and it scales with Celsius/Centigrade because anchoring it to water just makes sense.
Fahrenheit is fucking silly and people only defend it because it's what they were familiar with growing up, so they teach the next generation the same thing, thus perpetuating the cycle of tradition for the sake of tradition.
From Wikipedia: ——————— Several accounts of how he originally defined his scale exist, but the original paper suggests the lower defining point, 0 °F, was established as the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride (a salt).[2][3] The other limit established was his best estimate of the average human body temperature, originally set at 90 °F, then 96 °F (about 2.6 °F less than the modern value due to a later redefinition of the scale).[2] ———-
Any measurement of temperature is going to be relative to the atmospheric pressure among other variables… I’m not a scientist but Celsius is just as random… it may make more sense because freezing water and boiling water make sense to you with a refrigerator and stove… for most of human history this would not have made any sense…..
There’s uses of metric that make a lot more sense, it is not my intention to defend imperial systems of measurement or whatever they are called, it is interesting to me though….
What are the measurements we can define where if we met a completely alien race from another solar system where we could immediately agree on the system… that’s probably the best one lol
Kelvin does make sense with the absolute zero thing, in my opinion at least… now I need to look up if there is a maximum temperature. And whether it matters lol… matter would probably fall apart at that temperature in which case it doesn’t matter anyways haha (edit: I just learned that Kelvin uses the same scale as Celsius apparently)
Get it? It wouldn’t matter 😂
There is a theoretical max temperature, the Planck Temperature ≈ 1.416 x 10^42 K. It's the temperature at which the wavelength of emitted light is the Planck length.
Basically, a system at planck temperature probably would consist of many tiny black holes, and adding energy to said system would create a larger black hole, thereby lowering the temperature.
That sounds like a misconception based on the misconception that the Planck Length is the smallest distance possible. Admittedly, I dropped out of physics 10 years ago so I might have no idea what I'm talking about.
Woooooah, man, but what if you put some weeeed in there man….
I thought a Planck was a small measure of distance? So that’s space,
I assume you have a idea what you know, space itself has energy?
Also, wouldn’t the black holes just combine, I assume these black holes are far apart in space?
I am not a physicist lol
I thought a black hole was a whole lot of stuff so a small black hole sounds off the charts ugh now I have to pretend to be a scientist and and go back to my mit free lectures damn it
Edit: In my imagination you’ve made me try to put a bunch of black holes kind of like dots on a black sheet of paper in the canvas of my imagination but if they were that close together they would just instantly combine or explode or something, the space between the dots would have to be some inconceivable distance for the “small” black holes to not combine and explode or gravitate the waves or whatever they do when they do that.
Or maybe it’s some perfect system where the small black holes are gravitating orbiting each other because we are talking about the maximum conceivable temperature so kind of like Led Zeppelin Pink Floyd or Bob Marley or something
Way cool, thank you :
The idea is that the tiny black holes are planck scale and they evaporate before they get anywhere near each other. Picture this:
It takes 10^20 Planck lengths to equal the diameter of a proton. It takes 10^20 protons to equal the diameter of the earth. And it takes 10^20 earths to equal the diameter of the observable universe.
That’s wild
Simplified: A black hole is the result of density – how much mass you cram into how little space. If something is heavy enough, even light passing near it gets pulled in and swallowed, so there's some area where no light escapes: a black hole.
The difficulty is that you need a lot of gravity to bend the course of light. Gravity gets stronger the closer you get to the center, so at a certain distance, it will be strong enough no matter how little mass the object has.
But most objects are simply too large: Light will bounce off without ever getting that close to the center. You'd need to squeeze them together real hard to make them small enough, but there are other forces trying to keep them in shape that will resist you.
What you mean with "a whole lot of stuff" is the way more stable black holes work in space: A bunch of stuff so heavy that its own gravity is stronger than the forces trying to keep shape. If it's strong enough, it can pull itself together so close that it gets smaller than that distance. Thus, there's now an area around it where light can be trapped.
If you involve quantum physics, things get fucky, and supposedly there actually is some radiation still escaping, which is what the other post referred to, but I'm out of my depth there. There are also different types of black holes with their own complications, a bunch of details I skipped and a lot more I don't even know.
Space is awesome and big and full of nothing and tons of tiny, really fascinating bits of not-nothing sprinkled in, and we could spend our entire lives studying it and never know just how much we don't.
About the maximum temperature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHyctwgE6m4
Actually both freezing and boiling vary depending on your altitude...
I agree with you, except that I think the time system is great. It was deliberately designed to be maximally divisible, and makes a lot of sense in that manner. 12 hours of daylight— a highly divisible number, with 60 small (minuscule, or “minute”) divisions of the hour, which is even MORE divisible than 12. Then when time keeping got more accurate, they added a second division of 60 more parts, and… well, called ‘em seconds.
Basically, 12 and 60 are just so divisible they make really good bases.
That’s really interesting thanks
!anythingbutmetric@discuss.tchncs.de