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ghafftoday at 1:10 PM3 repliesview on HN

A big part of it is certainly what you're used to.

The other part, which I'm sympathetic to, is that for human scale everyday things, Fahrenheit 0 degrees lines up with really darned cold, 100 degrees with really hot outside of an oven, and the degree size is about twice as granular as Celsius.

And while Celsius degree size is indeed widely used in engineering calculations, you're often using Kelvin as the absolute temperature scale. (Which does use Celsius degree increments of course.)


Replies

bryanlarsentoday at 1:54 PM

> and the degree size is about twice as granular as Celsius.

And then they'll argue that the inch is more convenient than the centimeter because it's twice as large.

That's backwards. Fractions of an inch are in far more common usage than fractions of a centigrade. Ideal might be both a smaller inch and a smaller centigrade, but between the two a smaller inch is more helpful than a smaller centigrade.

Symbiotetoday at 4:33 PM

This is just your familiarity.

Someone from the tropics might say 8°F is really darned cold, or 15°F, or whatever.

graemeptoday at 1:56 PM

0 lines up with freezing point is very intuitive.

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