this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[โ€“] [email protected] 88 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Kelvin is for scientists.

Celsius is for people.

Fahrenheit is a translation layer between Celsius and Americans. All their weather stations have been Celsius for ages, it's a societal decision to use an arbitrary unit instead. The "69F censoring" which turned out to be a rounding artefact illustrated that nicely. Their government could change that, power to them that they decide not to ๐Ÿคทโ€โ™‚๏ธ

[โ€“] [email protected] 43 points 8 months ago (1 children)

fahrenheit is literally defined by celsius at this point, afaik celsius is literally the official standard of the united states but everyone just.. keeps using fahrenheit anyways

[โ€“] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There's also no such thing as an inch. It's defined by the meter, there isn't an official yardstick.

The only reason the UK, Canada and USA used the same inch is because they needed to interchange parts for weapons and machines during WW1. Despite all thinking they used the same measurement system the definition had drifted between them. Metric was defined by enlightenment people with better methods of reproducing the standard. So it was easier to adopt a inch definition based on 25.4mm.

The UK and US inch only match because of WW1. The imperial volumes are still different.