Do Americans understand celsius?

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Despite the fact that Canada is *officially* Metric, we still use imperial measures for a lot of different things, including our burgers. A quarter pounder with cheese isn't called a "royale with cheese" here, it's called a quarter pounder with cheese.

Celsius is officially imperial. Kelvin is the SI unit of thermodynamic temperature.

Some American engineers, who use imperial measurements in everyday life, are concerned that the reluctance of the US to adopt metric sized components has harmed engineering and manufacturing industries when it comes to exporting products to the rest of the world because replacements or tools to fit them are difficult to find or expensive. Even simple parts like metric sized nuts and bolts have to be specially ordered in the US but every fastener store sells them in the rest of the world. The reverse is true with SAE sized nuts and bolts. Products measuring temperatures in fahrenheit but not celsius are virtually unsellable outside of the US. Imperial sized bearings are available from most suppliers in Britain but the BS covering them was withdrawn in 1997 so they are not recommended for new designs.

AM 740 in Toronto tells the temperature in both Metric and Imperial.

Makes more sense TO YOU, but its not precise,:

1) It’s the system 95 percent of the world uses
(It’s not standard in the U.S., Burma, and Liberia)
2) It’s easier to make conversions
(You just move the decimal point right and left)
3) Teaching two measurement systems to children is confusing
4) It’s the language of science
5) It’s the language of medicine
6) Human conversion errors are inevitable
(We lost a Mars orbiter that way and pharmacy mistakes are common)
7) It’s the language of international commerce
Many hobbies and sports use the metric system
9) Its use is necessary for travel outside of the United States
10) So we look less foolish and ignorant to the rest of the world
11) Less clutter since you don’t need liquid and dry measuring cups and teaspoons and tablespoons
(Just a scale and liquid measuring cups)
12) It’s much easier to conceptualize 1 gram verses 1/28th of an ounce or 1 milliliter verses 1/29 of a liquid ounce (rounded measures)
13) There are fewer measures to learn. Most people will use meters, liters, and grams verses more than 10 for liquid and dry measures alone
14) It was designed to be easy to learn and use
(In 1790s Europe the literacy rate was around 60 percent)

Genuine scientific temperature is measured on the Kelvin Scale not the Celsius Scale. The Kelvin Scale is the scale that the laws of thermodynamics require. However the size of the Celsius degree equals the size of the Kelvin degree.

The nice thing about the Kelvin Scale is there are no temperatures lower than zero Kelvin. At the temperature the entropy of a crystal is zero according the third law of thermodynamics. In effect all motion ceases (well not quite. The Heisenberg Uncertainly principle demands some motion).

The SI system of units rules. However in the U.S. we have a mixed bag. Electrical units are all SI volts, watts, farads, ohms. That is because under old English units there was no recognition of electricity. Only weights, volumes, areas, lengths and aggregates had old English measurements. Energy (or work) was introduced to the English system by James Watt who reckoned power (energy per second) by what a horse could do, hence horse-power (745.5 Joules/sec = 745.5 watts) became a unit of power.

The metric system was introduced by the French shortly before the French Revolution. The French scientists wanted length measurement that were related to natural things like the circumference of the earth. The Celsius scale became universal because it divided the temperature interval between freezing of water and boiling of water into 100 parts. So temperature could be defined in terms of natural constants.

I am one American who is totally at home with metric units and measurements. That is because equilibrium thermodynamics is my true religion.

I'm an American and I personally use metric. The temperature last time I checked was 7°C.

Sometimes I accidentally say the temperature in Celsius, or say my height in cm or something like that because I'm more comfortable with metric now, even though I live in the U.S.... and people get confused about it, lol.

I want to live in another country someday, around other metric-using people. (Not because they use metric, but for other reasons.)

I spend more time communicating online than in real life, so it only makes sense that I would use whatever system of measure that my online friends do, and most of them use metric.

I spent my early childhood in a Celcius country before moving to America.

For me, Celcius and Fahrenheit are completely different concepts. I understand how cold or hot something is when given temperature in either measurement, but I cannot convert between the two.

What I don't get is what do Americans when they say "10 degrees below freezing".

In Fahrenheit water freezes at 32 degrees. So when Americans say "10 degrees below freezing" do they mean minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit or do they mean positive 22 degrees Fahrenheit?

Typically, we mean +22 degrees F when we say that. However, I am an oddball here as I usually relate all of the temperatures that I deal with in the laboratory on a daily basis to the Kelvin temperature scale. At the low end, some Americans may know about dry ice temperatures (195 K) by experience (ie. freezing warts, shipping foods), but most have never handled liquid nitrogen (77 K) or even liquid helium (4 K) by themselves. That is sad.

When I was a child (in the Sixties' USA) I was a closet Celsius person in a Fahrenheit nation. I used to wonder why the freezing point of water was 32 degrees. I thought that that was ret*d,and that whoever set the system up should have made the freezing point of water be "zero degrees". Learned later that that is exactly what they do in celsius (set the zero point to the freezing point of fresh water).

But today in my middle age its hard to switch to thinking in celsius. My ideas of temperature comfort are to much pegged to Fahrenheit numbers.

Most of my reading is in the physical sciences so I am at home with the MKS system (meter, kilogram, second). I tend to reckon length in metric units and I am totally unused to using non-metric energy units. I have to use a converter app to get from BTUs to kiloJoules and I reckon temperature in Kelvin 273.15 Kelvin = 0 Celsius.

Here is an historical note. Celsius originally set his scale 100 at freezing and 0 at boiling. But it was soon inverted to be 0 at freezing and 100 at boiling. There is an absolute temperature scale, the Rankine scale which has the same size degree as the Fahrenheit scale. Freezing point of brine is 0 degrees Fahrenheit and 459.7 degrees Rankine. Freezing point of fresh water is 32 degrees Fahrehheit and 491.7 degrees Rankine. Absolute zero is 0 degrees in both the Kelvin scale and the Rankine scale.

I still use Fahrenheit here in the UK but many people use Celsius. Its still all very confusing for me living in the UK as we measure things in both imperial and metric based on age or even what we are talking about for example a persons weight is always stones and pounds even though we are meant to be metric. A car tyre is measured in both eg 18 inches diameter by 45mm depth by 225mm width. I never did get why that was and there are numerous other intances but I won't go on.

Someone else on WP posted that that is a world over thing about tires. Theyre the one commodity thats measured in both metric and imperial at the same time, but imperial in diamater, and metric in width.

OMG, this really irritates me that America still uses Fahrenheit and empirical (English) units when the rest of the advanced world uses metric and Celsius (or Kelvin in chemical labs). I have this debate with folks on a somewhat regular basis (I am American). I find that the reasons no one wants to switch is for really small-minded things like "because that's the language of football!" (American football) or "I don't want to replace all the tools in my toolbox." (Okay, on a certain level that's understandable).

Thomas Jefferson actually advocated for switching to metric units in 1790 or so, but the decision pretty much boiled down to "Is that what the crown is doing? Nope, forget it."

In a more direct answer to your question, no, most American do not understand Celsius. Actually, a better way of saying it is that most Americans cannot conceptualize Celsius because they have always learned Fahrenheit and Celsius means nothing to them. Although in STEM fields you will find that most folks do understand it and are just as frustrated as I am about America using outdated units that don't fit into scientific formulas.

As to another query I saw where someone wasn't sure how to convert:

C = (F-32)/1.8
F = 1.8 * C + 32

Im in USA, I work with celcious. It's how I naturally read my weather and what i set it to on my phone.
but then I forget that no one else does this so when I say it's 27 degrees people are very confused
Also, I forget how to fahrenheit because I do this so it takes a second for me to understand the temperature if someone else tells it to me.

I obviously prefer celcious. But other than in maths and school sometimes, no one American really does this I know

I always see these and it still makes me laugh.