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Post by Bret Walker on Sept 5, 2003 10:43:22 GMT -5
Duh, the Fahrenheit system of temperature measurement was devised by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, the German physicist who invented the alcohol and mercury thermometers. In 1724 he created the Fahrenheit scale. The Celsius or Centigrade ("divided into 100 graduations) scale was devised by Swedish physicist Anders Celsius around 1744.
So it wasn't even the English who came up with the Fahrenheit scale, but a German physicist.
From the Encyclopedia Brittanica:
Fahrenheit temperature scale, scale based on 32 degree for the freezing point of water and 212 degree for the boiling point of water, the interval between the two being divided into 180 parts. The 18th-century German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit originally took as the zero of his scale the temperature of an equal ice-salt mixture and selected the values of 30 degree and 90 degree for the freezing point of water and normal body temperature, respectively; these later were revised to 32 degree and 96 degree, but the final scale required an adjustment to 98.6 degree for the latter value.
Now, I have no idea why he did it this way. Anders Celsius' method makes a lot more sense. But whatever.
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Post by Kexpakki on Sept 5, 2003 12:57:59 GMT -5
ok i dont know anything about your systems exept there stupid. why the hell havent Americans changed it?
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Post by Bret Walker on Sept 5, 2003 17:01:35 GMT -5
We did, we changed Celsius to Kelvin. 0º Kelvin is absolute zero, or -274º C. That is the coldest temperature possible, the temperature at which atoms stop moving. So water then freezes at 274º K and boils at 374º K. It makes more sense to have temperature start at 0 and go up from there, than to have a 0 and then negative temperatures. That makes no sense.
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Post by Kexpakki on Sept 6, 2003 9:54:21 GMT -5
well it just dosent sound right if its 280° outside and its still cold *you need another smile witout the fingers*
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Post by Bret Walker on Sept 6, 2003 14:22:59 GMT -5
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