they didn't really try. it's more of a suggestion (and still is). metric is standard in the US within science, just not among regular folks because commercially it's not as dramatic, i.e. news stations dramatize 100F!!! since it sounds way more dramatic than 38°C. if the news and commercial products started using metric, people would quickly switch over.

unfortunately a lot of imperial shit has started migrating to europe due to chinese products being produced for the US market and then sold in europe as an afterthought using imperial units.

Change is hard. In Europe we wanted to drop daylight saving time, but nobody could agree on which hour to keep. So it's here to stay. Sigh.

It's actually UK legacy. UK moved to metric but US didn't.

https://www.vox.com/...

De-juro, US already uses metric - there's samples and document and stuff like that, just like in other countries. This makes it even more peculiar, because it's just the people that aren't willing to drop some old system that they brought from the colonial British Empire with them back in the day; you'd think it only makes sense, with all the freedom and independence tendencies, but somehow the archaic measuring system from the monarch is still vigorously beloved and defended by millions... even though they've declared independence from the monarch a couple of centuries ago.

We live in a weird world.

@aproposnix @sisyphean so you're a genXer or a late #boomer

And a new USDefaultism while we're at it.

Ik it exists on reddit, but it would be nice to not make it around Americans.

I did exactly this but with 24 hour clock lol

Any tips on switching over / adjusting?

Can you set your thermostat using Celsius?

Some older people in the UK still prefer Fahrenheit, Celsius is still the official/default unit however.

A politician here recently tried to promote returning the UK to Imperial units, it has gone nowhere so far.

Wow really? Cause you never really think of Liberia of having their shit together.

Celsius is also kinda arbitrary, but at least it sets its 0 and 100 to very fundamental, observable temperatures, namely the points where the state of matter of water changes. There are more constraints to it of course, in particular atmospheric pressure, and the modern definition of Celsius is actually purely based on Kelvin (which in turn uses the Boltzmann constant), but as long as you're not high up in the Andes, everybody can observe a pretty good approximation of it.

Its prevalence is also the outcome of a long process of many different scales. In 19th century Europe, before Celsius completely took over, Réaumur was also very popular. It set 0° at the freezing point of water and the boiling point at 80° under normal atmospheric conditions. Thinking about it, it's quite wonky to do that, but at least it's easy to convert to and from Celsius. On the other hand, the similarity in temperatures makes it slightly harder for plausibility checks.

I ran into this when researching the history of some stuff and the specific scale was not always included, but the temperatures in the particular context both made sense as Celsius and Réaumur. That's when you then have start digging through a whole early 19th century 500 page book printed in a German Gothic font just to see whether the specific temperature scale is mentioned anywhere.

Only if you're measuring water temps. In general it makes more sense to put the zero of your scale at absolute zero

Fahrenheit's 0 is the freezing point of water - salt water that is. Not that I think it's better, just that there was some thought put into it.

!ShitAmericansSay

I find the conversion between the two easy enough to do it my head.

This isn't exact but is close enough for conversations and 99% of my needs.

(Temp in F - 30) / 2

Examples

70F:
70F - 30 = 40
40 / 2 = 20C

10F:
10F - 30 = -20
-20 / 2 = -10C

The actual number is 21 / -12 but this is close enough for me 99.9% of the time

Isn't Fahrenheit a "feel" temperature unit anyway? Once you need precision (science), even Americans switch to Celsius/Kelvin.

This, for sure. I live in the US and wanted to learn to understand Celsius so I switched my phone to use it. Internalizing a system works where translating/converting does not. I quickly learned that I feel comfortable in temperatures in the 20s. Since I feel comfortable in Fahrenheit temps in the upper 60s to mid 70s I can guess what the conversion is for most temps, but I don't have to do it to understand that I like how 22 C feels.

Similarly, if you're traveling and having to use a foreign currency I prefer to establish an idea in my head of cheap, reasonable, expensive than stopping to convert every price exactly. A "reasonable price" is relative to the item and location, of course, and should also affect my perspective.

Absorbing a new system by this method works fairly easily for temperatures and money, but less so for other measurements. I don't have as fine-tuned a sense of what ounces, pounds, or grams feel like as I do units of temperature. And I am always adding or subtracting 12 to understand time when expressed as 13h and up.

During the brief period when the US was encouraging metric system understanding there were many highway speed limit signs expressed as 55 mph / 88 kph. Every time I need to make that conversion I think of 5/8 because of that sign. And I usually just make guesstimates that work well enough.

I like learning new things. The generation before me in my family turned off their brains long ago and now suffer dementia. I work to keep my mind active. Learning other units of measure is one example.

Finally I'll say that I WISH I could get to a point of understanding languages this way without translation.

Terrific insight. I had often wondered if that alone would assist with adoption if it became standard in the US. That, or we would just print it in two formats all the time..

Thank you, this is a a great idea! I've found these common temperatures online, in case anyone wants to learn them:

Disagree. Celsius is super helpful for determining if it's gonna snow or not, a key weather thing where I live. Humid and cold and below 0? Snow. Humid and cold and above 0? Rain or freezing rain.

Also helps with plants. Below 0? Frost.

I'd argue you can't get more intuitive than 0 is cold, below 0 is very cold. Celsius also plays nice with round numbers, every 5 or 10 degrees is a change in feeling. 0 is cold, 5 out is cooler, 10 out is cool, 15 is moderate, 20 is comfortable, 25 is room and warm, 30 is hot, 35+ is very hot. Every ten degrees we're doing big changes. 0 is frozen, 10 is cool, 20 is comfortable, 30 is hot. 32 being frozen doesn't feel as intuitive.

even for weather I find it more practical to know that water freeze at 0C so you can expect snow and icy roads around 0

Celsius works perfectly fine for weather. People all over world have 0 issue. It's just what you qrw acustomed to.

Celsius is human friendly Kelvin

I live in the US but since I was born in Europe I take the Canadian route on which units to use

Fahrenheit is better for weather

You're just used to it. The rest of the world have 0 problems using it for weather.

76f to 70f is imperceptible to the vast majority of human beings so that argument doesn't really hold water. All it does is make communication globally more difficult because you guys insist on using non-metric.

For us who can speak more than one language, that's approxiamtely -18 to 38 ⁰C. I find it unlikely that the lower end of that is frequent where you live. If it is, then the hogher end can't be. Even if we want to base this around winter weather, negative being freezing makes much more sense.

It's not about human senses, it about what you grew up with.

I don't get the precision argument. It really doesn't matter for personal use because you wouldn't feel the difference anyways and if you really needed it to be as precise as possible (for... I don't know, science) you'd use decimals. And if you're sciencing, you'd use the system that allows easy conversion, which is metric.

What additional arguments besides personal experience would you give to back this precision claim?

Temperature scales are arbitrary by nature, and the criteria behind their definition can be useful or not. Fahrenheit's isn't that much useful compared to Celsius' or Kelvin's.

So precise that everything is rounded to the nearest 5 or 10 degrees lol.

How is it more precise? Surely they are equally precise. You’re just assigning a different number to a temperature.

Ha! You can't just say "fight me" and then disappear! What are your arguments?

It's not like something fundamentally changes at a logical 0 C. Oh wait. Well it's not like it falls from the sky. Oh wait.

I don't want to fight you because you're absolutely right.