Do Americans understand celsius?

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ruveyn
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27 Jan 2013, 6:00 am

auntblabby wrote:

"as far as a country kilometer" just doesn't have the same ring to it. :hmph:

But "two klicks up the road" does.

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27 Jan 2013, 6:04 am

^^^
my oh my, you're up early.

Nambo
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27 Jan 2013, 9:03 am

I think its even more confusing for folk here in the United Kingdom as it seems we use Centigrade in the winter, and Fahrenheit in the summer, probably the fault of the media as it sounds better to report a summer scorcher as 90 degrees rather than 32 degrees.

So here in the UK, in the winter people think that when it get to 0 degrees we are going to be quite cold and have ice on the road, but that in the summer it will be a hot day when we see 90 degrees.

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27 Jan 2013, 9:24 am

Nambo wrote:

Fahrenheit tends to only be used in news headlines. The weather reports always have celsius. IMO much of the mainstream media is geared towards the baby boomer generation who probably prefer fahrenheit..

beers
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27 Jan 2013, 4:26 pm

I've seen most people think it's weird/awkward and don't really have a reference to measure in C when everything is referenced in F.

It helps a lot to be involved with computing and taking temperature specs in Celsius.
I use F for "Hey they say it's going to be mid 60's today, that's really warm for winter!" or "My CPU just peaked over 65C, therefore I need additional cooling".

For all useful purposes, obviously it just ties a number into a perception of the temperature.
I would say that Fahrenheit could be perceived as more accurate as there is a wider array of values available in the same thermal envelope as measuring with Celsius, but that too is simply perception/convenience as nobody is going to quabble over a few decimal places for degree measurement.

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eric76
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27 Jan 2013, 10:46 pm

ruveyn wrote:

eric76 wrote:

If we had eight fingers on each hand, that might have been the case.

If we had four fingers on each hand, we'd probably use octal.

The Incas had ten fingers, ten toes and war open sandals. They developed a base 20 positional system complete with a zero. This is something that Greece and Rome never did.

ruveyn

Good point. So a hexadecimal system might have been the case if we had eight fingers on each hand.

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28 Jan 2013, 1:27 am

It annoys me to no end that we haven't adopted the metric system yet in the U.S. It makes soooooo much more sense than our current units! I mean really, lb-force AND lb-mass? Get real!

And if you report temperature in Celsius to the average American, they'll call you a socialist. Yes, it happened to me before lol.

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28 Jan 2013, 1:57 am

When it comes to this I am lazy I use google to convert it lol.

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ruveyn
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28 Jan 2013, 12:04 pm

What is there to understand? The Celsius scale spans the interval from the freezing of water to the boiling of water by a 100 unit scale and the Fahrenheit scales the interval from the freezing of water to the boiling of water by a 180 unit scale.

It is a trivial difference mathematically speaking. The interval from freezing to boiling is what it is.

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28 Jan 2013, 12:47 pm

Arran wrote:

MXH wrote:

thats an incorrect statement. Many specific industries worldwide still use the "imperial" system for their activities. For example, tires are marked in inches for their diameter and cm for width. There have been tried at fully metric tires but there were just too many cars using non metric ones for it to be possible to switch. Which brings usto why the US hasnt and cant switch. Theres just too many people to be able to fully teach everyone. And while yes every student learns it in school theres too large a workforce using the imperial system for it to just be thrown out in one day

I was talking about fahrenheit. Not imperial in general...

Imperial is still in widespread use in the UK and most young teenagers are familiar with several imperial measurements and use them in everyday life, but fahrenheit isn't one of them. Do American schools teach fahrenheit or celsius?

you missed the entire point of the paragraph. its that we do learn about it, we just dont apply it because we are too invested in something else. it also nswers the usage of other measurements all in one neat paragraph

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03 Feb 2013, 11:54 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

But the USA is like a whole continent (the whole european union) unto itsself. But it seems to me that even we have to confrom to metric eventually.

At this time, only three countries - Burma, Liberia, and the US - have not adopted the International System of Units (SI, or metric system) as their official system of weights and measures. Although use of the metric system has been sanctioned by law in the US since 1866, it has been slow in displacing the American adaptation of the British Imperial System known as the US Customary System. The US is the only industrialized nation that does not mainly use the metric system in its commercial and standards activities, but there is increasing acceptance in science, medicine, government, and many sectors of industry.

Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... dix-g.html

And according to Sheldon, Jimmy Carter was the worst president ever because he wanted to adopt the metric system but then just gave up.

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07 Feb 2013, 3:33 pm

Arran wrote:

Celsius has been mandatory for medicine in the UK for over 50 years and all doctors and nurses are familiar with it. Quoting body temperatures in fahrenheit is considered bad practice. Weather reports have used celsius since the 1960s but fahrenheit is commonly included. The food industry uses celsius and it has been the predominant measurement for cooking for at least 25 years. Primary schools have taught almost exclusively in metric since the 1970s. My school never taught imperial measurements but many were in common use in the real world at the time. The younger generation is familiar with many imperial measurements despite the onslaught of metrication but others including the fluid ounce, fahrenheit, British thermal unit, and hundredweight are fading into obscurity.

I can pretty much confirm this. I don't have a clue about Fahrenheit and don't intend to learn it.

I think that generally my generation use imperial measurements for things they discuss with their parents, such as long distances and speeds (miles ahead of kilometres), weight of humans and foodstuffs, and heights of humans (feet ahead of metres/centimetres). Even then, we're generally comfortable using both scales, except for speeds and long distances.

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02 Mar 2013, 3:09 am

Do central heating thermostats and HVAC equipment in the US have the option of displaying temperature in celsius or are most fahrenheit only?

beers
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02 Mar 2013, 11:53 am

Arran wrote:

Do central heating thermostats and HVAC equipment in the US have the option of displaying temperature in celsius or are most fahrenheit only?

Most of them are just in F.
A few fancy ones will probably give you Celsius numbers but I haven't been in a residence with one.

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ruveyn
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02 Mar 2013, 3:07 pm

beers wrote:

Arran wrote:

Do central heating thermostats and HVAC equipment in the US have the option of displaying temperature in celsius or are most fahrenheit only?

Most of them are just in F.
A few fancy ones will probably give you Celsius numbers but I haven't been in a residence with one.

For a little extra you can get a thermostat scaled in Celsius or both Celsius and Fahrenheit.

Inertia and habit favor the British units and Fahrenheit. People who do technical and scientific work must learn to use both systems which is a p.i.t.a. Fortunately Celsius and Fahrenheit are very easy to inter-convert.

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02 Mar 2013, 3:19 pm

Not quite, though I kind of wish I did since its sort of what the rest of the world uses, so I'd just assume understand that and have Fahrenheit be incomprehensible. Kind of like the metric system, much more efficient and the U.S is still stuck in inches and feet, WTF...trying to get those measurements out of my head so I can properly understand the metric system.

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