Comment by Broken_Hippo
3 years ago
In some places, most of your instruments will likely be in Fahrenheit and Fahrenheit is what you use daily for most tasks. It only makes sense that you use Fahrenheit as your reference point.
A home in other places is more likely to have Celcius, and you'll likely use it.
It isn't like it is difficult to convert.
No, it is very hard to convert.
The US has about 4% of the world population. Adapt. It's not worth the communication problems.
No, it is very hard to convert.
Do you think folks are doing it by hand? nope, they use the internet, the same thing we are communicating on.
I agree that the US should convert, but that's another discussion. No need to crap on folks for using something familiar when we all know that's why they do it.
I used a generic unit conversion app that has a specific function for F-to-C conversion. That takes a minute or so to start, enter the numbers, etc. I could have read tens of paragraphs of text in that time.
I agree I'm being a bit harsh here, coming out of the blue on a random comment. But in general I'm very irritated that using non-metric units in an international forum is still a thing. The onus should be on the Americans in their communication, not on others.
The UK and Canada have converted, or are in transition. It takes a generation or maybe two, but I'm certain it's worth the trouble.
not easy to convert accurately in your head, but google does unit conversion right in the search bar:
and macOS spotlight you can go even shorter:
USian here, two perspectives. I wish we used the SI system, it’s clearly superior and I agree about the communication problems. It’s also really not that hard to convert temperature roughly, just a factor of two and a constant.
The US customary units have a lot advantages. For example:
In Fahrenheit, 0 is really cold while 100 is really hot. In Celsius, 0 is kind of cold while 100 is damaging to life.
With feet and inches, you can easily divide a foot by 2, 3, 4, and 6 with no repeating decimal digits. It's the same reason the ancient sumerians used base 60 for their number system.
With liquid measure, a cup is roughly what would be considered a serving with a meal while a litre is one hundred millionth the distance from the equator to the north pole, cubed
As a non-American I don't understand the Fahrenheit vs Celsius arguments. What's special about 0F being really cold and 100F feeling really hot? I find that -20C being really cold and 30C really hot quite intuitive and easy to understand. Also in terms of weather it is easy to understand that below zero temps snow and ice will form. Add the convenience that Celsius is basically just an offset of Kelvin and I really don't see the appeal of Fahrenheit at all.
2 replies →
> In Fahrenheit, 0 is really cold while 100 is really hot. In Celsius, 0 is kind of cold while 100 is damaging to life.
0C: I need shoes, pants, sweater, coat, gloves.
10C: sandals, pants, two light layers.
15C: sandals, shorts if sunny, one long sleeved top.
20C: sandals, shorts, shirt. Hoodie if windy.
25C: sandals, shorts, shirt optional.
Etc.
How is F more convenient in any way?
0 is freezing, 100 is boiling.
12 is a handy number but decimal calculation isn't difficult either, especially when all your units use the same.
What is a cup? How do you do calculations with a third of a cup etc?
I know a cup is roughly 200 mil. From exposure in life I know 200ml is about a cup of tea and 300ml is about a mug of coffee /can of come, 500 is a big can of beer. How many cups are in a can of beer?
3 replies →
Dude we all have robot calculators in our pockets - it’s the work of seconds to convert with zero thought on the user’s part:
“Hey Siri convert 190°F to Celsius.”
“190°F is 87.77 degrees Celsius.”
Boom. It is not very hard to convert.
The US represents half the readership on this forum. Audience-wise it's a "pick your poison" scenario in avoiding communication problems, so what's wrong with an individual copying their notes into a website not just leaving the units as written?
F to C -> subtract 32 and divide by 1.8
C to F -> multiply by 1.8 and add 32
This sounds messy but works out well for a lot of temperatures we are used to, for example... 0C is 32F ... 100C is 212F ... 20C is 68F ... 30C is 86F ... etc.
Why on earth would anybody willingly do that, unless forced by situation... and that situation should not be happening in 2023, period. Heck, even whole science is on metric system and Celzius/Kelvin scale so there goes usability argument.
I've heard all the excuses in past 4 decades whenever this topic comes up, but they can all be summed up as: butthurt ego, we are better than anybody and we don't care about reasons.
In Europe, during more primitive medieval times, even my tiny little country that wasn't country before had maybe 10 different measure systems mostly based on human body, various weight systems etc. There were always reasons for system XYZ, different conversion tables and so on. They were not worse than what US uses now, and are all part of history for same very good reasons.
Its not even a topic about 2 balanced viewpoints like driving left or right, metrics et al have trivial conversions so even folks struggling to finish primary school are well versed in it. What you describe is impossible to do for even older university-educated folks, unless they have been doing it for their whole lives.
I always forget when do subtract or add, or divide or multiply. So I use the known conversions 0->32, 100->212 to help remember.
i suppose they will when they have to.
They more or less did. It's just the general public that for some reason still uses these units.
2 replies →
what's your take on languages
On the contrary Fahrenheit and Celsius is one of the harder units to convert. Can't just "halve and remove 10%" in your head like you can for pounds. Though I agree with you that you can't expect Americans to use SI units.
The scale factor is 9/5, which is close enough to 2 that the precision is fine for casual conversion (weather report, discussion of boiling tea on the web, …)
Definitely not. Say, 86F to C. 86F is 30C, but dividing the F by 2 would give you "43C", which converts to 109F. That is not a trivial difference.
1 reply →
Most folks reading this will have the internet. It makes conversion easy. If you don't, charts help get most common things converted.
Easy.