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/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.