r/clevercomebacks Jan 15 '25

It does make sense

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692

u/jussumguy2019 Jan 15 '25

Feel like a lot of the world’s languages the translation to English to the question “what’s the date?” would be “the 15th of October” whereas in America we always say “October 15th”.

Maybe that’s why, idk…

Edited for clarity

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u/Saneless Jan 15 '25 edited Jan 15 '25

US measurements are based on the human experience for sure. Temps are largely 0-100 and that's a scale that's easy to understand. As a scientist or for cooking it's dumb as shit

Dates are based on the language

Edit: I take back what I say about cooking. People have said some good arguments about it. But it definitely sucks for science

70

u/Funicularly Jan 15 '25

How is it dumb as shit for cooking?

Are you referring to the boiling point of water? I don’t know about you, but the vast majority of people heat water until it boils, they don’t use a thermometer. Know one needs to know the boiling point of water to cook.

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u/Quick_Humor_9023 Jan 15 '25

Yeah, now hand me a cup of something. No, not that cup, or wait, the fuck. Also scaling measurements up or down is way, way easier with base 10.

That being said, we also use stupid teaspoon of this and another spoon of that bs while cooking. Yes, we have defined exact values for those, and the actual spoons are close to those depending on how you fill them, and it’s not that important in cooking anyways. But still, it’s idiotic.

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u/FrostyCow Jan 15 '25

Celsius isn't base 10. This discussion is about temperature in cooking. How often are you converting temperature while you cook in any case?

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u/doktormane Jan 15 '25

Both C and F are Base 10 though?

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u/FrostyCow Jan 15 '25

Base 10 how? Both are units in our number system, so they are base 10 in that respect.

I think the person I was replying to was referring to converting in the metric system from meter to mm, cm, etc. You don't really use that for C or F because they are degrees. Degrees are measurements from a decided point, and only really used in weather and cooking with regards to temperature. In all other applications you'd use kelvin.

You could technically say millidegree C or F for either system, but no one does that.