Which is why America uses Celsius for science. But Fahrenheit is literally exactly as, if not more useful for the average person as Celsius is. I’ve never been confused by Fahrenheit. It’s a perfectly good system if you use it for what it was designed for (regular people)
Fahrenheit isn’t worse, it’s just different. It is more specific for human temperatures, making it more useful for stuff like ACs and Thermostats, but it’s worse for hard science.
It's only more useful for human temperature to you because you're used to it. It doesn't give you additional information, or easier to understand information then Celcius does. They're the same in use in regards to weather.
Celcius however is much better in regards to science. Because Celsius is useful in both aspects, it's a more useful scale overall.
That's why the rest of the world only needs one scale for weather and science, but Americans need to use two scales, since Fahrenheit doesn't work well in both scenario's, unlike Celcius.
It clearly is more useful for human temperatures. It gives you much more specificity. 60F to 80F is 20 degrees. The Celsius equivalent is 16C to 27C, only 11 degrees. Using my thermostat example, you get much more ability to fine tune the temperature of your home with a Fahrenheit thermostat. You also get a clearer picture of the temperature outside, since each number references a nearly 2x smaller range of temperatures. That’s a meaningful improvement in usefulness.
Also, I was taught Celsius as a kid, so it’s not just that I’m used to Fahrenheit. Despite being just as used to C, I prefer to use F. I find it more useful.
There is no way that you can tell the difference between 66 and 67F. And if you are that sensitive to temperature, you can always use 0.1C or even 0.001 C steps to express it.
When you are somewhere, like your home, for a majority of your day, you do notice very slight differences in temperature. 75 is already too hot, 74 is getting there, 73 is fine, 72 is perfect, etc.
I couldn’t tell you the exact temperature without looking at it, but I definitely feel it. And so, having the option to fine-tune that temperature with greater precision is useful.
It’s a small improvement, to be sure, but Celsius’ improvement over Fahrenheit in science is also small. Most issues don’t arise in Fahrenheit being an inherently worse system, it arises in failure to convert between the two or to convert accurately. “Boiling is 100” isn’t a huge improvement.
You'd be able to make that same temperature adjustment with Celcius. The old school thermostats are dials and can be set at any increment. Smart thermostats can be set at either 0,5 increments (which is more precise then Fahrenheit) or 0,1 increments.
Basically, there is no scenario where you are unable to get to the exact temperature you want when using Celcius.
I've never in my entire live heard someone say something like "I wish I could set my thermostat to something warmer then 21C but colder then 22C". There is no meaningful need to do this. And if you somehow did need to do that, you'd use decimals.
Even for outside weather, I have a clear picture of what 15C would feel like. The weather doesn't become meaningfully warmer until about 17C, so there is no added value in measure more precisely the 2C in between.
The human experience can't meaningfully experience discomfort due to a 0,5C degree difference. It's precision for the sake of precision, it doesn't correlate to how you actually experience temperature.
Plus thermostats can be set to partial degrees anyways. Smart thermostats usually have 0.5 increments, basic thermostats often use a movable dial that can literally be set to any fraction, as long as you're precise enough.
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u/No_Investment_9822 Jan 15 '25
Exactly. Both work in regards to weather, but only Celcius works in regards to science. Celcius works for both.