Delta's like temperature are standard issue to resolve in globalization. Another fun one are complex units that are a combination of more base units like luminance (nits = candela / m*2 or mph. I worked on a package to globalize a consumer-oriented fintech reporting product. With ESG reporting this has become increasingly important to get the unit conversions and Delta's right. You end up mapping the data source unit…
How do frameworks deal with the miles/gallon -> liters/100km conversion? I've always found that one particularly interesting as one that requires inverting the units also.
Which gallon? There are two different ones (and for even more fun Canada and us don’t use the same)
Water-freezing temperature is an absolutely sensible zero. The difference between e.g. 2 °C and -2 °C is really quite obvious for the exposed skin: while it's merely "yeah, it's cold" feeling when it's above zero, it almost feel like the frost is biting , almost literally, when it's below zero.
This is not true, and it's why we developed separate scales for wind chill (which factors in wind) and heat index (which factors humidity). Looking at the wind chill chart[0] for frostbite times, there is nothing particularly special around the freezing point temperature, even at absurd wind speeds. Ironically, actually, the 0 point for Fahrenheit is far more relevant threshold for frostbite. [0] https://www.weather.…
But then this is also valid if the zero is at 21°C. There is also nothing special at 0°F, it’s just the colour scale that makes it look like that. And if we based the scale on human perception we’d have to define many other parameters besides wind and humidity, like body shape and metabolism rate. It’s more of an argument against basing a temperature scale on human perception (and then I agree completely, which is why I find the centigrade scale much better, except for serious business that demands kelvins).
Yes just ignore the vast majority of native English speakers. I wonder why an English-language newspaper (which heavily markets itself outside the UK) didn’t think of that.
Or we can just use a calculator. I'm sure most people's phones can even translate it by a voice command "What's 20 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit?"
There's a decent chance that the author of the incorrect headline did exactly that.
Isn't ths following incorrect.... somehow? Something doesn't line up. ---- Reading the article I found this: parts of Malawi saw a maximum temperature of 43C (109F), compared with an average of nearly 25C (77F) As I expected the actual temperature increase was 32 °F, not 68 °F. --- Except the error should have been 32 (which you go on to explain, because we add 32 to start a conversion) and the correct temp differenc…
The original article started by rounding an 18 degree difference up to 20.
If you want "twice as hot" to be meaningful, you have to use an absolute scale, either Kelvin or Rankine. (1 K = 1.8 °R) Doubling absolute temperature doubles the pressure (at constant volume) or volume (at constant pressure) of an ideal gas. This gets really important when it comes to compressing and expanding air and other gasses. Room temperature is approximately 293 K, twice that is 586 K / 595 °F / 313 °C. Hotte…
Kelvin doesn't use degrees
You’re right in modern usage, but it is common to see °K in older documents.
Water-freezing temperature is an absolutely sensible zero. The difference between e.g. 2 °C and -2 °C is really quite obvious for the exposed skin: while it's merely "yeah, it's cold" feeling when it's above zero, it almost feel like the frost is biting , almost literally, when it's below zero.
This is not true, and it's why we developed separate scales for wind chill (which factors in wind) and heat index (which factors humidity). Looking at the wind chill chart[0] for frostbite times, there is nothing particularly special around the freezing point temperature, even at absurd wind speeds. Ironically, actually, the 0 point for Fahrenheit is far more relevant threshold for frostbite. [0] https://www.weather.…
Wind chill is a mostly stupid number that weather reports like to trot out so they have a amped up "wow it's really cold" factor. Yes, a number of factors p[lay into our subjective perceptions of temperature but you're probably not walking around in a bathing suit when it's below freezing with a howling wind.
IMO the worst is that cal starts weeks on Sundays for some weird reason.
As long as the boundary doesn’t happen in the middle of the work week, I find it completely arbitrary whether the official first day is Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. Why’s it any more weird to start on one or the other?
It's not, but it's annoying when there's a difference, and you won't know which day "Sunday week 45" refers to without doing a thorough background check on the guy who said it.
It's a bit like decimal point vs. decimal comma. Neither is inherently better, but man would it have been nice if we'd all picked the same one.
Twice as hot is also useful in Celsius. For every increase of 10C chemical reactions happen twice as fast, it will literally, thermodynamically be twice as hot. Which will probably even match your subjective feeling. Celsius scales thermodynamically logarithmically. You can’t just double the numbers. (The same with sound etc.)
Reaction rates are approximately exponential in temperature, but there is nothing special about 10C. The doubling temperature difference depends on what reaction you look at. This is as opposed to decibel for sound, where +10 decibel means X10 power exactly.
To be clear, that's true of power decibels for everything, not just sound.
This is not true, and it's why we developed separate scales for wind chill (which factors in wind) and heat index (which factors humidity). Looking at the wind chill chart[0] for frostbite times, there is nothing particularly special around the freezing point temperature, even at absurd wind speeds. Ironically, actually, the 0 point for Fahrenheit is far more relevant threshold for frostbite. [0] https://www.weather.…
Neither of those are as important as “when water freezes” (ice snow weather effects), boils, and having a nice 100d in between
The freezing point of water is indeed one reasonable origin point but the temperature at which water boil (at sea level) isn't very relevant to most people's day to day experiences much less having a nice interval between the two points. You have to use Kelvin as an absolute scale for a lot of scientific and engineering calculations anyway although it would be pretty silly for day-to-day use.
This is not true, and it's why we developed separate scales for wind chill (which factors in wind) and heat index (which factors humidity). Looking at the wind chill chart[0] for frostbite times, there is nothing particularly special around the freezing point temperature, even at absurd wind speeds. Ironically, actually, the 0 point for Fahrenheit is far more relevant threshold for frostbite. [0] https://www.weather.…
But then this is also valid if the zero is at 21°C. There is also nothing special at 0°F, it’s just the colour scale that makes it look like that. And if we based the scale on human perception we’d have to define many other parameters besides wind and humidity, like body shape and metabolism rate. It’s more of an argument against basing a temperature scale on human perception (and then I agree completely, which is wh…
Yeah, it's not like Fahrenheit or any temperature scale is literally calibrated to human perception (they're all now defined as transformations from kelvin anyways), that's just a (minor) ancillary impact that can be discussed.