this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 74 points 2 months ago (9 children)

Strange, because it is bullshit.

Fahrenheit isn't how people feel, otherwise 50° would be perfect temperature.

You Americans are just used to thinking in Fahrenheit, that is why you think it is how humans feel. As a European, I "feel" in Celsius.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 24 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Fahrenheit literally meant to base the scale with 100 being human body temp.

It was later rescaled by Cavendish to put the freezing point of water at exactly 32 and boiling point at exactly 212, giving a nicely-divisible 180-degree separation between freezing and boiling. That shift is why body temperature is 98.6.

[–] NounsAndWords@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I like this version better than "he had a fever when he measured 100 degrees" so I will choose to believe it without further research.

I hope you are correct.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] NounsAndWords@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The Report of the Committee Appointed by the Royal Society to Consider of the Best Method of Adjusting the Fixed Points of Thermometers; And of the Precautions Necessary to Be Used in Making Experiments with Those Instruments

Seems fancy and legit, I see no reason to actually read it and confirm the info.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

Welcome to peer review!

[–] morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 months ago

Horse* body temp

[–] doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I'm pretty sure that wasn't actually Fahrenheit's intention, more a happy accident. Also if your body temp is 100°F then you're running a mild/moderate fever.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

The scale was adjusted later to make freezing and boiling points land on exact numbers with an easily-divisible 180-dregrees between them (180 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 20, 36, 45, 60, and 90).

https://archive.org/details/paper-doi-10_1098_rstl_1777_0038

[–] nulluser@programming.dev 2 points 2 months ago

I don't usually run, but when I do, I run a mild/moderate fever.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I heard circular thermometers were how it was done then so he lined up 180° with 180°.

[–] uienia@lemmy.world -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

I cited and linked my source from the 18th century when it was redefined. What's yours?

[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 17 points 2 months ago

otherwise 50° would be perfect temperature.

I love it when it's 50ish out and sunny. You don't get all sweaty, plus you can wear cozy socks and sweaters or just go out in short sleeves and both are perfectly fine. The bugs all start going into hiding at that temperature but the grass and leaves are still green

[–] where_am_i@sh.itjust.works 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

As a European I can perfectly feel the 0 degree. I step outside and 5 seconds later I can tell you if it's below zero or not.

For me "it's now really hot" in summer is exactly when it's over 30C. It being 86F doesn't make any more sense. Approximately above 35C I will avoid going outside. Which would be 95F, not 100. From here, the temps in summer in the south of Europe are often around 100F at peak. Above or below doesn't matter.

All that Fahrenheit scale is good for is if you live in a continental climate, more to the south, e.g. some useless place like Oklahoma, where 0F is approximately year low, and 100F is approximately year high.

For all other places, where the temperature delta over the course of the year is not as extreme, this Fahrenheit scale is as unintuitive as celcius, e.g. you just get used to it.

[–] TheTetrapod@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Rating inflation. If someone called you a 5 or 6 out of 10, you'd feel bad. 7/10 is the bottom of acceptability, just like 72° is room temperature.

[–] akilou@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

50 degrees is a damn good temperature. I won't stand here and let you besmirch 50 degrees.

Its not the "perfect" temperature but what temp in celcius is "perfect"? What a ridiculously proposition that there's a perfect temperature.

[–] sznowicki@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

that's pretty comfortable, but between 50 and 70f which is about 10 and 20 c is the "comfortable range"

[–] Okokimup@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

50F is the perfect temperature.

[–] VitaminF 20 points 2 months ago

That's 10°C for those who want to judge you. And you're wrong, the perfect temperature is 17°C. Not too cold, not too hot.

[–] pixelscript@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

The correct rebuttal is that 69 degrees is ideal ambient temperature.

[–] doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

As is typically responded to this 'response': there are a large number of people-many European-who would unironically say that 50°F (10°C) is, in fact, the ideal temperature.

They're wrong, of course, but they exist.

But you're also assuming that the exact middle of the range is where the ideal sweet spot should be. That's wrong. People generally can better handle larger temperature deviations that are colder than their ideal than hotter deviations.

[–] pixelscript@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

The difference is that humans emit their own heat. Combined with our funny tendency to wear insulative clothing that can asymptotically approach zero net heat exchange with the atmosphere, acceptable temperatures skew wildly towards and beyond freezing.

Meanwhile, without some kind of acting cooling mechanism, any temp even slightly above fever temp is inevitably fatal. You can only take off so many layers. What are you going to do, take off your skin? Sweating helps us humans a lot, but evaporative cooling can only do so much to reverse the heat gradient.

50 F is excellent... with a light jacket or a blanket. Not so much if you're naked.

[–] ITGuyLevi@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Why would you pick 50 for the perfect temp? Genuinely curious why land on that number.

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Because 0° is the minimum a body is supposed to endure according to the tweet, and 100° is the maximum a body should endure.

So the ideal temperature should be right in the middle.

But it isn't, so Fahrenheit isn't "how people feel".

[–] toddestan@lemm.ee 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Why should the ideal temperature be right in the middle of the range?

It's no surprise that the maximum end of the range is right around the body temperature, as it's difficult for the body to keep itself cool once the environment is around or warmer than the body temperature. Sure, we can sweat, but that uses up a lot of water and people generally find that getting all sweaty to not be pleasant. Run out of water or raise the temperature too much and it gets dangerous pretty quickly.

On the other hand, if the environment is a lot cooler than the body temperature, then it is difficult for the body to keep warm. I'm sure for our distant ancestors who lived in what is now Africa, their minimum temperature was much higher, possibly putting the ideal temperature right around the middle of their range. Luckily for us, we have clothing and can put on more clothing to stay warm, which is how we can now make the minimum so low. But while we can use clothing to lower our minimum, we really don't have anything different to raise our maximum vs. our ancestors - we're both limited by how well we can cool ourselves by sweating. So for that reason it doesn't really surprise me that our ideal temperature is towards the upper end of what we consider the minimum and maximum temperatures.

[–] uienia@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Because it is in the middle of that "0 is really really cold, 100 is really really hot" "human feeling" fahrenheit scale you guys keep going on about.

[–] ITGuyLevi@programming.dev 1 points 2 months ago

This is the first time I've heard about a "human feeling" scale so sure, 50 must be perfect.

Fahrenheit isn’t how people feel, otherwise 50° would be perfect temperature.

it is though? It's like perfectly comfortable because you can dress up just enough to where you're actually wearing a decent bit of clothing, but you can also dress down to a pretty light set of clothing as well.

This is also ignoring that this is both, arbitrary, and also completely subjective to the person.

The human body might end up liking 70f more than 50f, purely because it's 96f inside the body, so something lower to allow heat transfer, but not low enough to be physically uncomfortable would be more expected.

Actually, here's a good question, why do you land on the 50f point? Are you expecting the middle to be the most optimal point of perfection? Or is this just a metric brain thing?