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Ranting. Metric System.

Posted By: ah_clem
Date: Friday, 6 December 2013, at 4:13 p.m.

In Response To: Ranting. Metric System. (Keene)

Has there ever been a measurement scale thats more stupid? Probably, but no-one knows about it because its been thrown away. 180 points of difference between two uniform points of reference. 180. Where the hell did that come from?

There is some method to the madness: 0 degrees F is the freezing temperature of brine, 32 degrees F is the freezing point of plain water. It's based on the older Romer scale; Farenheit multiplied the Romer scale by 4 to give better granularity and eliminate fractions. He then tweaked it a bit to make a 64 degree difference between the freezing point of water and human body temperature; this was to make it easy to make an accurate scale by simply bisecting the gauge multiple times. It was about 1725, and he was one of the first people working in the field, so cut him some slack.

You can read up on the history of Farenheit here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farenheit

I think the popularity of the Farenheit scale is that it's an intuitive zero to 100 scale. Most places, zero F is about as cold as it gets, and 100 F is about as hot as it gets. 2/3rds to 3/4ths (67 to 75) is the region where people are most comfortable. If you think about it that way it makes more sense.

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