When I was 16, I went to high school in California for half a year as an exchange student. I am from Germany and as a junior, I would have had something like my 4th or 5th year of chemistry in school, but out of necessity (or laziness) I took beginner's chemistry.

For exercises I had been paired with two girls who used to try to make fun of me (I think; I never really figured out what their deal was), and asked me stupid questions about myself or Germany. I remember they once asked laughingly whether I like oranges because I was wearing a t-shirt with an orange print.

Well, then one day, there we go. Converting exercises. You have students from 9th to 12th grade in groups of 3-4, trying to convert imperial measurements to metrics. And then metrics to metrics. Basically, for a couple of weeks, we just converted stuff like 14 cm to mm or dm. I forgot so much about my time abroad but the most vivid memory I have is of the girls looking at each other (after a couple of days and repeated explanations) and one says "the decimal system just makes no sense" and the other one quietly and slowly nods in agreement. I ask them how it makes no sense. "Well it just makes no sense." It's just base 10 everything and the rest is practice, it's not different from inches to feet. "No but you see this makes sense. There are 12 inches in a foot", continued by a list of how many shmekels make up a whoopsiedoodle and how many dingelings fit into a hybotron.

I understand how you first have to get accustomed to new units and how conversion might need practice when you aren't familiar with the prefixes, especially when you aren't too experienced in the stem field. But I am still flabbergasted by the statement that having a system where everything is just base 10 and then you shift the decimal point around makes no sense. We are talking about fellow juniors here. How do you make it to age 16/17 never having heard of a decimal point or having trouble with base 10 conversion? HOW CAN YOU SAY IT MAKES NO SENSE?! It's the simplest, most logic based system there is!

It may be that or it may be that our entire educational system has turned into shit through decades of low pay for teachers weeding out all the best people.

I am a US STEM professor.

Prove it! What is the speed of light in anacondas/average Snapchat duration?

Edit: around 10^11 anacondas per average daily snapchat usage among US teens

I have a theory that Americans are great at math because they regularly work with base-12 systems.

Kelvin: Zero is the freezing point of the universe

Is that true about fahrenheit? I've never heard that before.

Sauna competitions

I appreciate how you just dropped this casually like of course everyone knows about Sauna competitions.

I think it means dead as in trying to live in a 100° environment. Kind of like the survival rule of 3s, where you can survive 3 weeks without food, 3 days without water, 3 hours in an extreme environment, and 3 minutes without air.

I guess it could say "unsustainable" instead of dead, but that's less snappy.

What? No one's using C to that precision outside the lab. It just depends on what you grew up with man. I know below 0 I need a winter jacket, ~10C chilly, ~20C is shorts weather, ~30C is hot, >40C is death. Perfectly practical everyday estimations.

For me the only advantage of F is you can say it's 69F out and bake things at 420F.

People who use Celsius don't typically casually refer to the temperature with a decimal place.

The comfortable range is more compressed, but just like you probably say 75 instead of 74.5, they say 24 instead of 23.889.

Fahrenheit does coincidentally line up nicely for subjective weather scales, so it's not offensive for that use, similar to how pint is a good cup size, but in general consistency is king and you're not loosing anything by compressing a scale, particularly when we basically already measure the temperature in five degree increments, and generally refer to in in units of ten.

which temperature unit requires using decimals?

If you have to express the temperature with decimal precision for everyday use, you’ve lost.

I don't think it's necessary to do in Celsius though?

Too much of your identity is wrapped up in being able to talk temperature in multiples of ten, people.

Wtf are you talking about? You're the one that brought up how your favourite unit is superior, and we're the one that has our identity wrapped up in something?

Chill out. Maybe something near 42 degrees. Sorry, meant to say 5.6 degrees for the nerds in here.

Do you know how math works? Of course you're gonna end up with decimals when you're starting from F. Why don't you chill out at 11? Oh, I mean 51.8 you narcissistic swine.

It only makes sense if you grow up with Fahrenheit. Otherwise Fahrenheit isn't how humans feels since most of us have no concept what these number mean.

If I would just go with 0 - cold 100 - hot I would assume 50 - perfect. But 50 is still chilly. 70-80 feels like it should be getting hot but that's the most comfortable temperature.

Nah, Fahrenheit doesn't have a place. Humans feel temperature differently to one another. You can't make a set scale about it.

Humans have been known to live and thrive in temperatures well below 0°, as well as above 100°. And while 50° is the middle, it isn't even a comfortable temperature for humans.

0° is based on what that one Polish town measured in winter during that one year 1709, only later did they find something to represent that temperature.

The world doesn't need Fahrenheit. Humans don't need it either.

I always have to comment when I read s.th. like this. And I read it a lot when it comes to temperature scales. Celsius is completely fine scale for humans, most of the world uses it without any complaints. A human cannot tell 22° and 23° C apart. Even americans using Fahrenheit say something like "temperature is in the fifties". Fahrenheit (like lots of other scales in the US) has no real place in this world anymore except in this special american view of things...

So 50°F is perfect room temperature, right?

Oh for FCK's sake...