From San Francisco to New York, in museums, universities, classrooms and in the privacy of one’s own home, (and of course on Second Life), people are celebrating Pi. It’s the 21st anniversary of the celebration of Pi Day, an international holiday born at San Francisco’s Exploratorium. The number is Pi, 3.1415926535…ad infinitum. It’s today’s date and the starting time, the number you get when you divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter, and it cannot be expressed as a fraction. It continues forever.
19,
So, if I’m to understand you, when it’s 78F or 79F outside, Americans are able to distinguish between the two by the 1F difference? So, when it’s 78F you wear polyester jackets and 79F DEMANDS wool because it’s so precise? Right.
Why do Americans LOVE their Imperial British measurement system so much? Is it because you really wish that King George was still around? Hmmmm… now that I think about it, it probably is! Why else would GWBush get two terms?
Simple, we like it because we’re used to it.
Named
Well other than a lower resolution what is the advantage of Celsius?
23,
Measures of temperature are pretty arbitrary… Set any scale you like. But for reference, 0C freezing point, 100C boiling point of water makes perfect sense. They are really the only extremes that you and I and 99.99999999% of humanity will face everyday. 32 and 212 are pretty nonsensical.
As for the rest of metric… its a beautiful system. Simple. Precise.
I do not think anyone will be wearing wool or and material of jackets when it is 78 or 79 F. That is shorts and T-shirt weather, although 78 might be a tad too cold to wear shorts. Temperatures 79 and above are shorts weather though.
It is easier to tell the temperature in F. In C, you have to multiply by 5/9 or 9/5 and remember if you are supposed to add or subtract 32 to get the right temperature.
# 21 Named said, on March 15th, 2009 at 11:15 am
So, if I’m to understand you, when it’s 78F or 79F outside, Americans are able to distinguish between the two by the 1F difference? So, when it’s 78F you wear polyester jackets and 79F DEMANDS wool because it’s so precise? Right.
It is easier to tell the temperature in C. In F, you have to multiply by 9/5 or 5/9 and remember if you are supposed to add or subtract 32 to get the right temperature.
FTFY.
One more Fahrenheit post.
Originally Fahrenheit chose three points of calibration for his scale.
O degrees F was the temperature of a mixture of ice, water and a salt. Probably the coldest temp achievable in a lab at that time.
32 degrees F was the temp of an ice and water mixture.
The third point was the body temperature of a healthy person. He set this as 96 degrees F.
It has been said that he used Mrs. Fahrenheit as the 96 degree standard.
So Fahrenheit’s scale was based on how hot his wife was.
Later the scale was changed to have 180 degrees between 32F and boiling water. This was probably done because Mrs. Fahrenheit got tired of having her temperature taken all of the time. The end result was that normal body temp is now 98.6F.