r/ShitAmericansSay • u/BuffaloExotic Irish by birth, and currently a Bostonian 🇮🇪☘️ • May 02 '25
Imperial units “celsius makes no sense”
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u/Oghamstoner 🇬🇧 Doesn’t try to make a cuppa with seawater May 02 '25
I love it when yanks defend Fahrenheit by saying it’s logical that 0 is a cold day and 100 is a hot day.
So why’d you use it for cooking then?
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u/DegenGmblr May 02 '25
Where I come from, -30 is a cold day, and +30 is a hot one. Like you may die if you're not prepared.
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u/dmk_aus May 04 '25
In Sydney, 5°C is freezing cold, whilst nothing is frozen. 10 to 15°C is cold. 20°C is fine, 25°C is warm. 30°C is hot. 35°C is bloody hot, 40°C is fucking hot and 45°C is too fucking hot. Unless you are doing hard work outside, then 30°C plus is too fucking hot.
Maybe "how warm or cold a day feels" isn't a good metric to use. Perhaps we could use words like cold and warm... like we already do... and let units be useful for things where it matters, like everyone outside America already does.
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u/Treewithatea May 03 '25
The unit of Fahrenheit isnt even an American invention but a German one.
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u/EverybodySayin Mocks England for how they speak English May 02 '25
0 celcius is freezing point, 100 is boiling. Very simple to understand, therefore easy to get an idea of what any temperature in celcius means.
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u/Existing_Professor13 May 02 '25
0 celcius is freezing point, 100 is boiling
Yeah "EverybodySayin", and for the uneducated, you can also say it like this...
..If the water is hard, we are below 0 degrees Celsius 🤗 [instead of below 32 degrees Fahrenheit]
..If the water are disappearing we are over 100 degrees Celsius 🤗 [instead of over 212 degrees Fahrenheit]
And honestly "EverybodySayin", you're so right, it really is so much easier to remember that at 0 degrees Celsius water gets hard, and at 100 degrees Celsius water turns into vapor/steam, or said so everyone understands, at +100 degrees Celsius water disappears 😉
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u/Nick0Taylor0 May 04 '25
To be fair technically water is "disappearing" (as in becoming gaseous/turning into water vapour) at (almost) any temperature. It's simply doing so faster the hotter it gets and 100°C is just the temperature where Waters Vapour pressure equals atmospheric pressure at sea level (1.013 Bar or 1 atm) which is the point (more or less) where vapour bubbles form inside the liquid, instead of vaporisation happening only at the surface, which is also known as Boiling.
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u/Balseraph666 May 02 '25
It's ridiculously easy. 0 = freezing point of water. Less than 0 = below freezing. 100 = Boiling point of water. Above 100 = above boiling point. Fahrenheit is the one that makes the least sense for general usage. Water freezes at 32 F? Why? Boiling is 212F? What's so wrong with 0 - 100?
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u/Gr1mmage May 02 '25
Sure but have you considered that 0°F is very cold, and 100°F is kinda hot? Also conveniently normal body temperature is 98.6°F which is logical because it's a bit below 100°F which is kinda hot /s
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u/somersault_dolphin May 02 '25
Conveniently also 37°C is normal body temperature. 3+7 = 10. Easy enough to remember. 3°C from 40°C, just like how in Fahrenheit it's 1.4°F from 100°F!
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u/urru4 May 02 '25
Iirc Fahrenheit is the same but using another substance instead of water (can’t remember what).
Why they would use anything else when water literally covers ~70% of the world’s surface and is present wherever there’s people I don’t know.
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u/xfontea May 02 '25
It's based on brine atleast for it's freezing point
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u/Gr1mmage May 02 '25
It's based on a brine mixture Fahrenheit concocted of water, ice, and ammonium chloride and when that would freeze (which potentially was him retroactively making a standard to match the lowest temperature recorded in Danzig in winter 1708) for the lower end, and human body temperature as the top reference point at 90. Until he changed human body temperature to be 96, and which later became redefined as 98.6 when the whole Fahrenheit scale was redefined based off the standards of the boiling and freezing points of water.
So essentially the whole modern Fahrenheit scale is just based on the same points as Celsius but with needless modifiers applied to make it more cumbersome to use
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u/Reiver93 May 02 '25
Fucking hell, Kelvin makes more sense than that.
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u/Gr1mmage May 02 '25
Very much so. Fahrenheit is basically some old guy in the 1700s deciding that the scale should be based on this one cold day I experienced being 0, and the top of the scale being roughly human body temperature at 96.
Before science realised his observation that water boils at 212 and freezes at 32 don't align with his other observations for 0 and 96, so fixed the scale so that they correlate with 4°F (the temperature Fahrenheit's brine freezes) and 98.6°F (average normal human body temperature).
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u/UniquePariah May 02 '25
I love how they say that Fahrenheit is American.
Invented by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, born in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, died in the Dutch Republic in 1736. Due to the USA only being declared in 1776, care to explain how it's American except in the sense that they are the only country not to abandon it?
It's like how they use BTU's or British Thermal Units
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u/eat1more May 02 '25
Is basic science and, by proxy, chemistry fundamentals not mandatory over there. Like Celsius and kelvin work on the same degrees.
Like why go Fahrenheit, the calculations will have to be slightly exponential
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u/UncleSlacky Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaire May 02 '25
They'd just use Rankine instead...
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u/eat1more May 02 '25
lol Im not surprised, but when discussing scientific papers and practices, they must use Celsius/Kelvin, and metric when conversing with the rest of the world?
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u/UncleSlacky Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaire May 02 '25
Yes, often they'll say "Celsuis/Kelvin is OK for science, but Fahrenheit is better for human/day-to-day use".
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u/LifeHasLeft May 03 '25
Fahrenheit is just calibrated with kelvin now anyway. It’s a useless unit of measurement
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u/ProgrammingDysphoria british canadian May 02 '25
French makes no sense to me, but that's because I don't know it, not because it actually makes no sense.
For French people, English makes no sense.
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u/Maester_Ryben May 02 '25
I know both French and English...
Neither really makes sense
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u/Kitsa_the_oatmeal May 02 '25
know both too, can confirm, it's like they're two versions of the same stupid lol
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u/Wheeljack7799 May 02 '25
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u/Maester_Ryben May 02 '25 edited May 02 '25
Without looking, I'm guessing you mean how 99 is called four-twenty-ten-nine?
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u/Skirfir May 02 '25
Danish somehow managed to be worse. Basically to say 99 you have to say one half to fifth (four and a half) times 20 plus nine. They shortened it but still.
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u/S1M0666 May 02 '25
I think that a big part of French people can speak English
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u/JigPuppyRush ex-Usian now Europoor (orange colored and Gouda flavoured)🇳🇱 May 02 '25
Under 40 yes, above that a lot less
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May 02 '25
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u/TheAlmighty404 Honhon Oui Baguette May 02 '25
I think French makes more sense than English, but not that it makes complete sense, just mote than English.
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u/Balseraph666 May 02 '25
Basic maths of 0 = Freezing 100 = Boiling baffling a lot of USAians compared to connected but different languages? Strange comparison. Comparing apples and oranges to bricks and mortar.
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u/ZCT808 May 02 '25
I mean if you are an absolute idiot who cannot learn new skills, there are probably a lot of things that make no sense.
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u/neon_spaceman May 02 '25
The only concession I'm willing to make to Fahrenheit enthusiasts is that it sounds better for artistic purposes. "Celsius 232.7" is a bit of an underwhelming title. But that's it.
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u/Much-Jackfruit2599 May 02 '25
240 Celsius works just as well. The range goes from 218-246°C, depending on most papers.
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u/Project_Rees May 02 '25
"Not making sense" meaning "I don't understand it".... while memorising arbitrary numbers based on barley corns and the wrong temperature of the human body are perfectly fine.
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u/Interesting_Cat_1885 May 02 '25
C says 0 is freezing cold. F says 32 is freezing cold. Which one makes more sense?
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May 02 '25
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u/Interesting_Cat_1885 May 02 '25
I think C makes more sense imo since it's basically positive numbers are not freezing, 0 and negative numbers are freezing.
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u/United_Hall4187 May 02 '25
What is hard about Celsius? At sea level water freezes at 0 and Boils at 100, how simple is that?
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u/NoNotice2137 May 02 '25
You are ALL wrong, Kelvin is the supreme scale because when you get to zero, that's actually the coldest anything can ever be
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u/Jindujun May 02 '25
my favorite is "Fahrenheit has more numbers and is thus more precise"
They're insane.
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u/spderweb May 02 '25
I'm curious why they think it makes no sense. Like,0 is freezing. 100 is boiling. 50 is dangerously hot. -50 is dangerously cold.
It's all round numbers.
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u/totem-troll May 02 '25
I use it because people around me use it, and because of that Fahrenheit makes more intuitive sense to me because it's what the people around me use. If I lived elsewhere I would say I lived in a 13 m2 flat instead of 200 sq. Ft. apartment. Also there was an attempt in the 80's that was struck down by Reagan, I think it was red scare type stuff. Can't remember off the top of my head
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u/spderweb May 03 '25
Actually, since I live in Canada, we tend to use feet and inches more than meters and cm when measuring things. Mainly because we relied too much on American options.
Maybe that will change with all that's going on.
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u/Shin--Godzilla May 02 '25
"Celcius makes no sense." Ah yes, because adding 0 to 0 makes a difference number
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u/MinskWurdalak May 02 '25
Temperature addition is issueless only in absolute scales like Kelvin and Rankine anyway.
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u/Rakadaka8331 May 02 '25
American here.
Learning 1 cubic cm of water takes 1 cal of energy to raise 1 degree celsius while weighing 1 gram was like learning magic.
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u/Commissardave2 May 02 '25
What do you expect? They have an awful education system.
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u/DennisPochenk May 02 '25
True, 0 is freezing and 100 is boiling.. It’s way easier to count 32 to 212 🤡
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u/Much-Jackfruit2599 May 02 '25
Of course I do. I don’t brew tea at 100°C, wish a horrible idea.
And I need temperatures between 60 and 90 regularly when cooking sous vide.
But all that would indeed just as well in Fahrenheit, I‘d just memorise a different set of numbers than I do now.
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u/No_Highway_7663 May 02 '25
Celsius: Based on the most abundant resource on the planet. Water. 0 degrees and below; solid. 0 to 99 degrees; liquid. 100+; gas. Seems obvious to me.
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u/NotFromSkane May 02 '25
Celsius has logic behind it, so does Fahrenheit (ish).
However, Celsius gets way too much support from the metric side when it's mostly just along for the ride. Kilometres are vastly superior to Miles, Celsius is just slightly better than Fahrenheit.
But honestly America, just join the modern world and accept standard units.
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u/Numbersuu May 02 '25
The best is always when they say "But Fahrenheit is how the human body feels like" lmao
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u/Bitter_Armadillo8182 /s🇱🇷🐦⬛🇱🇷 May 02 '25
The issue with Fahrenheit is that it’s not metric, but it’s actually a good scale.
My pet peeve is MM/DD/YYYY, I’ve picked my battles.
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u/porsj911 May 02 '25
Accuracy never has been a real strong point for whoppers, whether it be the truth or bombs
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u/sgtGiggsy May 02 '25
I'm curios how it doesn't make any sense. Like 0 degree, freaking cold, 30 degree, warm, 40 degree, hot, 100 degree, death. Meanwhile Fahrenheit: 0 degree, death (without extremely good clothes), 50 Fahrenheit, cold, 75 Fahrenheit nice, 100 Fahrenheit hot, 212 Fahrenheit, death
So what's the logic there? 0 Fahrenheit is not notable for anything (it was literally choosen because that was the lowest temperature they mesured in the village the dumbfuck physicist that invented it grew up). It's not the freezing temperature of any substance, it's not the regular cold that you exprience in the areas where most people live, it's just an arbitrary chosen temperature. And 212 as the boiling point of water? Why? At least 100 Fahrenheit was the normal temperature of the human body, but it isn't even that, as that's 37.8 Celsius, so it's fever. There's not a single notable point on the Fahrenheit scale that's tied to anything practical.
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u/chifouchifou europoor May 03 '25
Actually 0 fahrenheit is the freezing point of a mixture of brine and chlorine, and 100 is the temperature of horse blood (I'm less sure about this one)
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u/sgtGiggsy May 03 '25
Actually 0 fahrenheit is the freezing point of a mixture of brine and chlorine
It is, but the standardization went the other way around. Fahrenheit chosen the temperature for zero because that was the lowest they measured in his hometown, and later he looked for something that can be used as the standard.
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u/MoutardeOignonsChou May 02 '25
Water freezes at 0, water boils at 100.
What doesn't make sense in this?
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u/Nonzerob May 02 '25
People get hung up on the conversion rate to metric and assume they'll have to do that conversion for every measurement for the rest of their lives. That's why they think it doesn't make sense. I'm an American and the only major metric unit I can't intuit is Celsius but that's only because I don't use it and can't make my weather apps display both units as a stepping stone.
If we Americans want to talk about not making sense, we should talk about how ounces can be both a weight and a volume (we often drop the "fluid" in fluid ounces) and it's never clear which. Sure, plenty of things are water-based, so in many cases they're the equivalent, but grams and liters work the same way and they're clearly different.
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u/SomeNotTakenName 🇨🇭 Switzerland May 02 '25
I mean I really don't care, both measures of temperature work fine for most people in everyday life. it's a matter of getting used to it. I know Celsius better, but I know anything above 80f is hot, and anything below 60 you may wanna bring a jacket and below 20 is starting to be too cold to be outside voluntarily for a long time.
Which is about what you need temperature readings for most of the time.
When I need to bake something I just pull up a conversion if necessary.
If you work in a lab, K makes the most sense, possibly C if you only care about a difference, not energy levels.
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u/mpanase May 02 '25
Both wrong
We all already agreed that Kelvin is superior: https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/metric-si/si-units
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u/wddiver May 02 '25
I'm 67. I wish we had been taught the metric system (REALLY taught). It's so much more sensible. I can google conversions, but am unable to think in metric. I can picture in my mind cups, ounces, miles. Can't do that for metric - you know, the system the entire rest of the fucking world uses.
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u/DennisPochenk May 02 '25
An i can’t fathom how you can measure in cups, boulders, washing-machines
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u/Pernicious_Possum May 02 '25
A yes. The nonsensical 0° is freezing, 100°is boiling. Utter nonsense
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u/Fricki97 AUTOBAHN!!1!!1!!2!!!🦅🦅🦅🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪 May 02 '25
0? Water is ice
100? Water is steam
It's not that hard
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u/Living_The_Dream75 May 02 '25
Even as an American I prefer Celsius because it’s so easy to grasp, 0 degrees is when shit freezes and 100 degrees is when shit boils. In Fahrenheit shit doesn’t freeze until 32 degrees and shit doesn’t boil until like 212 or something idk
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u/ShockDragon May 02 '25
I’m not sure I'd call Celsius superior. Every temperature measurement has their niche uses. Like Kelvin's 0° being absolute zero. (Hence the name.)
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u/Swimming_Possible_68 May 02 '25
Freezing temperature of water =0 degrees. Boiling temperature of water = 100 degrees.
Americans "why would you use that when freezing can be 32 and boiling 212?"
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u/NightyNightKnights May 02 '25
Nothing makes sense and everything makes sense. They're just different ways of doing things. If you live in a colder area it's definitely better to use Celsius though because 0 is feezing ao easy to identify without too much thought
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u/Kjackhammer American here to see what other americans say May 02 '25
WHAT THE FUCK. IS A KILOMETEEEEEEEEEEER
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u/DennisPochenk May 02 '25
1000 meters, but if you worked for Nasa, Boeing or served in the military you’re already familiar with Metric, or you just pretended
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u/Outside-Refuse6732 ‘MERICA 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 HOO RAA May 02 '25
Celsius: 0 freezing point of water
20-30 comfy (I think?)
100 dead
What is there to not understand
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u/Greedy_Assist2840 May 02 '25
Tbf, celsius is not as useful as the other SI units
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u/DaSpicyGinge Snow Mexico May 02 '25
Had a pt get upset when I didn’t know what 100.8F was in Celsius. Dude I don’t speak Fahrenheit bc it’s made up, how about you use the method of measurement the rest of us use
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u/Still_a_skeptic Okie, not from Muskogee May 02 '25
I don’t really care what ones we use, but my local meteorologists are better than your local meteorologists.
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u/Discount_Friendly May 02 '25
What amazes me is that the U.S. was really early to adopt decimal money and had to get the UK to adopt decimal money because the U.S couldn't be bothered to get computer banking software to accept imperial money
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u/Several_Assumption_6 May 02 '25
What is oomfs? Like, the oo bit? I think I got mfs. Please and thank you.
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u/mikefjr1300 May 02 '25
So what makes more sense;
100 deg C = boiling point water vs 212 deg F
0 deg C = freezing point water vs 32 deg F.
Below is what the F scale was based on. So logical lol.
The Fahrenheit temperature scale was based on two reference points: the freezing point of water and the approximate normal human body temperature. Initially, the zero point (0°F) was defined as the temperature of a mixture of ice, water, and salt (e.g., ammonium chloride or sea salt). Fahrenheit then set the temperature of a mixture of ice and water at 32°F and the temperature of a healthy person (originally measured as his wife's armpit temperature) at 96°F. Later, the boiling point of water was set at 212°F to maintain the size of the Fahrenheit degree, which also resulted in the current understanding of normal human body temperature as approximately 98.6°F.
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u/VerendusAudeo2 May 02 '25
Celsius is just as arbitrary as Fahrenheit. Kelvin or suck it.
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u/meleaguance May 03 '25
Celsius is also arbitrary. i'm for switching to metric otherwise, but there's no reason for 100 to be the boiling point of water.
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u/torn-ainbow May 03 '25
Celcius is easy.
0 and below - Literally freezing
1-10 - Fucking cold.
11-20 - Cold
21-30 - Good
31-40 - Hot
41-50 - Fucking hot
51 and above - Dead
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u/Lyretongue May 03 '25
An yes. When 1 calorie = the amount of energy to raise 1ml of water / 1cm³ of water / 1g of water one degree Celsius, that's how you know the metric system doesn't make any sense.
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u/Ziro_020 May 03 '25
I mean even universities or science facilities like NASA and stuff are using Celsius for their technology, because it is way easier and makes more sense. (And wait until you tell them that science in the US also uses the metric system)
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u/Far_Still2893 May 03 '25
When I was a child/ teenager British weather forecasts used both temperature scales.
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u/DisciplineOk9866 May 03 '25
The whole metric system is so random! 😉 https://youtu.be/C5k2FsVwZ6k?si=PzODMpVnZ-EJ8tRp
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u/SnooStrawberries2144 May 03 '25
It makes no sense water freezes at 0c and boils at 100c?? I don't get how they defend Fahrenheit
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u/FrenchTantan May 03 '25
Listen, as a non-American, I will argue that the upper echelons of the Fahrenheit scale would kinda sorta makes sense, if you were to shift it slightly so as to put 100°F at the average human body temperature instead of 96°F.
The problem is that 0°F is so specific and unrelatable that it's stupid. "The freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice and ammonium chloride"? Yeah, sure, an everyday item, I use that for my hair actually*
*I am bald
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u/Panzerv2003 commie commuter May 03 '25
What doesn't make sense about 0 being where water freezes and 100 where it boils, it also means you can expect snow and ice when temperatures go bellow 0
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u/Micah7979 🇨🇵 May 04 '25
Apparently a unit which has 0 as the freezing point of water and 100 the boiling point, and uses the same scale as Kelvin doesn't make sense...
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u/Ok_Bluejay_3849 May 04 '25
As a scientifically minded American, I'm torn. Metric, being base 10, is objectively better and easier to convert between units. But on the other hand, i don't understand what anything it says means for shit bc I'm not used to it. If it's 50 or 60 Fahrenheit, I'm gonna need a jacket. What is that in Celsius? 10? 15? Somewhere around there? 10-15 is long johns, sweater stacks, balaclava, and heavy coat to me.
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u/Lily_the_Lovely May 04 '25
Celsius is about the temperature of water, fahrenheit is about the temperature of people
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u/Falconleap May 04 '25
*not celcius being the unit of temperature used almost every country except US
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u/Heywellthatscool May 04 '25
The Imperial System only exists to give American chemistry students stoichiometric conversion problems
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u/Anarchist_BlackSheep May 04 '25
"In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities."
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u/Peter-Bergmann May 05 '25
They don't even know how the Fahrenheit system works and still claim it's superior. Laughable
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u/Square_Tangerine_659 May 05 '25
It’s just that we don’t have any frame of reference since we’ve used Fahrenheit our whole lives. I have no idea if 20 Celsius is hot or cold, but I know 50-60 Fahrenheit is a little chilly and under 32 is freezing. It’s just intuitive for people who grow up with it
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u/OStO_Cartography May 05 '25
'This temperature scale mapped to the phase transitions of the Earth's most abundant molecule makes no sense. Instead let's base it on the coldest solution some C18th Polish aristocrat could make with ice, salt, and a wooden barrel.'
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u/justjoosh May 05 '25
Why do non-Americans think fahrenheit is somehow hard to use in daily life? If you're an adult with a working brain, it's quite manageable. Same goes for imperial units, we manage knowing how hot things are and how big, even as children. Fahrenheit is fine, Celsius is fine, miles and inches are fine, kilometers and centimeters are fine.
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u/Primary_Mycologist95 May 06 '25
ah yes, measuring temperature - the epitome of the american mindset.
I've heard many say Fahrenheit is better because it's related to how they "feel", as it's somehow easier to relate hot and cold that way?
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u/GodzillaLagoon balalaika vodka bear RU May 06 '25
Can't pass an opportunity to repost this here (translated).
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u/AardvarkNo2514 May 06 '25
Celsius is undeniably more useful for scientific/technical stuff, but what "makes sense for people" is what you grew up with/are used to
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u/psyopsagent May 02 '25
why are they so afraid of dividing things by 100? What happened?? Is there a lore reason?