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Comic strip of a ghost and a person with the American flag pasted on the head. The ghost repeats “Boo!” in the first three panels without getting any reaction, but when it in the fourth panel says “kg, cm, km, °C” the American gets scared and screams “AHHHH!!!”.
Edit: fixed alt text
Yeah, everyone shits on the US for this but we do science in metric, and also everyone seems to ignore that the UK is all kinds of fucked up as well-- weight in stone, etc. I’d also argue that outside science F is a better scale for talking about weather. Sure 0 makes for a better freezing point, but most temps on inhabited earth are about 0~100 F or -25~40 C. If you knew nothing about F or C and someone asked if a scale from 0 to 100 or -25 to 40 made more sense, which one do you think most people would pick?
-25 to 40 is very useful for weather. Especially in a northern country. The only reason they don’t switch is “best country in the world” delusions they’ve been fed to believe is true since birth.
My point was any numbers are useful for weather if you’re used to them, but if you proposed a new scale without any baggage attached to it 0 to 100 makes way more sense than starting at neg something and going to 40 instead of a rounder number like 50 or 100
Below 0 means dangerous. That’s something that F doesn’t do clearly.
Below 0 C? Freezing doesn’t mean dangerous (obviously it’s dangerous if you’re homeless or don’t have regular access to heat). I live somewhere now that it hovers around freezing all winter and I literally can’t wear my old thick coats from where I grew up (northern US). I have to wear a fall coat pretty much all winter or I overheat. Below 0 F is a much better indication of dangerous weather than the freezing point.
How about just slipperyness? The fact that you can’t farm and thus have no reliable food source? The fact your water souce disappears?
I’ll admit, no method of measurement is perfect as biomes changes too drastically. This doesn’t mean Fahrenheit is better though. It’s not more intuitive, it’s not better at actual measurements, and it’s not as accepted by society ('cause people way smarter than me did find Fahrenheit worse than Celcius (see any above high school science/engineering))
To explain the more intuitive, I am literally incapable of using Fahrenheit, and it means fuck all to me. Thus my intuition is incapable of using it, and thus Fahrenheit isn’t naturally understandable. Granted, Celcius isn’t either.
if 0-100 isnt intuitive, the scale was never the problem
The actual reason the us hasn’t switched is the many billions of dollars it would cost for basically no tangible benefit. There are probably better uses of that money if we actually got to spend it on what we wanted, like social programs.