228 points

When you use Celsius from birth 41C does make you say FORTY ONE DEGREES?!!!

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142 points

Yeah, but it hits different. Smaller number is smaller.

That’s why I use Kelvin. THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN DEGREES?!!

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98 points

Degrees? While using Kelvin?? OP is a phony!

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24 points

I’d excuse it as part of the joke

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26 points
*

Should use Rankine with that logic. It comes out to 566.

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6 points

Why not Centikelvin?
THIRTY ONE THOUSAND AND FIVE HUNDRED CENTIKELVIN??!!!

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4 points

Who is kelvin and why the fuck are his numbers so large

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91 points

100%

It’s just Americans having American perspectives promoted as world views.

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28 points

It’s about crossing into triple digits, a new order of magnitude, it feels heavy.

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24 points

But it’s also underwhelming when your usual reference for over 100 is, “WHAT IT’S HOT ENOUGH TO BOIL WATER OUTSIDE!?”

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11 points

American: IT’S A HUNDRED AND SEVEN DEGREES OUTSIDE

Civilized people: no it fucking ain’t, you overdramatic princess

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4 points

It doesn’t really though for people who doesn’t use fahrenheit.

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3 points

… for you.

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-5 points
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brother, that’s what a world view is lmao, do you not understand this concept?

Most of us don’t really go anywhere outside of the US, the entire continental US is the literal equivalent of the collective EU. What do you want me to say? I literally don’t need to leave to US to experience something geographically unique.

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8 points

I think they’ve meant world’s view, not worldview

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3 points

geographically unique

Geographically perhaps. But the cultural and historical unique is something you are going to miss out on by staying inside your own home country for your entire life. You think your US regional differences are the same as the differences between two countries, but anyone who has experienced different countries will tell you in an instant that that is not so.

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28 points

On the other hand, if it was 107°C outside, the outrage would be so much more justified.

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31 points

But much less vocal.

You know, because we’d all be dead.

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7 points

No, he’s right. The “one hundred” part really does add certain powers, Austin Powers

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5 points

It’s that extra “one” of incredulity.

40 degrees, that’s just too hot.

41? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

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5 points

In Australia we go with “Farkin hot”

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175 points

By that metric, kelvin would be even better though.

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156 points

by that metric

Americans cannot understand any metric

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76 points

2 liter bottle.

Checkmate, athiests.

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25 points

Also we have electric, water and gas meters smh

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55 points

9mm

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26 points

We’re more familiar with 5.56x45mm thanks to all our school shootings thank you very much.

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12 points

28 grams to an ounce

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4 points

In point of fact Americans have gotten impressive results out of far more complicated metrics than metric. It’s not a matter of understanding, it’s a matter of pride. And of not having to buy all new tools.

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68 points

You miss out on screaming that it’s negative anything though.

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28 points

-40F = -40C

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4 points

Kelvin doesn’t have a negative.

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16 points

The best system would have 0 at a mild, comfortable temperature, and go up or down by 100 degrees per one degrees Fahrenheit.

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14 points
*

But mild and comfortable is different for different people who are acclimated to different weather.

We need a defined ‘mild’ temperature. i vote for 70F/21C.
It’s a bit chilly for the warm weathered folks and a bit warm for the cold weathered folks. Seems reasonable but I’m open to suggestions.

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7 points

0 for freezing because water falls from the fucking sky.

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12 points

You can absolutely yell about that. And when Fahrenheit flips to negative, you’re ready to express some big feelings about how fucking cold it is.

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20 points

And Rankine would be even better than Kelvin in terms of “big number go brrr.” Water boils at 671 R.

Of course, Rankine is the most obnoxious unit I’ve ever had to deal with, but those numbers sure are big!

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17 points
*

You mean it’s THREE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN FUCKING DEGREES OUTSIDE?!

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4 points

OK, but with Rankine, if it’s 101 out, you can go Five Hundred and SIXTY degrees??!

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2 points

Please raise this temperature by 1.4x10^-23 Joules - statements of the utterly deranged

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2 points

Joules are energy. You need thermal capacity to turn them into temperature.

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-1 points

“Kelvin” sounds a lot like “communism” you pinko

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154 points

For proof that this thread is just people justifying what they know as better somehow, look no further than Canada.

We do cooking temps in Fahrenheit, weather in Celsius. Human weights in pounds, but never pounds and oz. Food weights in grams, cooking weights in pounds and oz. Liquid volume in millilitres and litres, but cooking in cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. Speed & distance in kilometres, heights in feet and inches.

Try and give this any consistency and people will look at you like you’re fucked. The next town is 100km over, I’m 5ft 10in, a can of soda is 355ml, it’s 21c out and I have the oven roasting something at 400f. Tell me it’s 68f out and I will fight you.

People like what they are used to, and will bend over backwards to justify it. This becomes blatantly obvious when you use a random mix of units like we do, because you realize that all that matters is mental scale.

If Fahrenheit is “how people feel” then why are feet useful measurements of height when 90% of people are between 4ft and 6ft? They aren’t. You just know the scale in your head, so when someone says they’re 7ft tall you say “dang that’s tall”. That’s it.

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26 points
*

We do cooking temps in Fahrenheit, weather in Celsius.

Fahrenheit: let’s use “really cold weather” as zero and “really hot weather” as 100.

Celsius: let’s use “freezing water” as zero, and “boiling water” as 100.

Canucks:

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2 points
*

Fahrenheit: let’s use “really cold weather” as zero and really hot weather as 100.

I don’t really have a horse in this race but this logic doesn’t seem legit to me.

How is -17°C really cold weather AND 37°C really hot weather?

One is actively trying to kill you if weren’t already dead by the time the weather got that bad. The other just makes your nuts stick to your thighs – if you’re in a humid place.

I’d agree with the logic if 100F was equal to something like 65°C. 🤷‍♂️

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8 points

It makes no sense because that’s not what the 0 of the Fahrenheit scale is. The 0 point is the coldest an ammonium chloride brine mixture can be cooled to. The 90 point was an estimated average for human body temperature (it was adjusted up over time). These were chosen because the goal of the scale was to provide a way for people to have a defined temperature scale with a range and degree size that could be reliably reproduced without passing around standardized tools. 100 is really hot because human bodies were used as a reference for the high end, but the low end has nothing to do with the human body.

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3 points

0f is pretty fucking cold outside, your nose hairs start to freeze in this weather. It’s genuinely uncomfortable and you can die pretty easily if you aren’t prepared for it. 100f is similar, anything over 100f and you start to get into straight heat exhaustion and potential heat stroke region of danger. it’s really not that bad? Sure if you’re like, standing outside doing nothing in the shade, you’ll be fine, but do some labor and you might meet the fabled heat exhaustion fairy.

Obviously, when you convert it to celsius, it seems really fucking weird, That’s pretty normal for conversions though. Like just to be clear, if you round these numbers, they make more sense. -20 c and “damn it’s really cold out” you round up to 40c and “damn it’s really hot out”

also im not really sure what you’re trying to say, but 0f isn’t like, going to kill you kill you, it’s not pleasant, but in the right attire you’ll be fine. -20 f and you start getting closer, -40f and you really start having to think about it. Are you aussie or something? This scale seems really shifted up to me. “nuts sticking weather” is like 80f and humid here.

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3 points

Thank you. That argument bugs the heck out of me.

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2 points

Every time a heat wave brings 100F, the news starts reporting about old people dying. Every time the temperatures reach zero, same thing.

Personally, I can handle the cold much easier than the heat. I get stupid-brain working more than 30 minutes at 95F. Another 15 minutes and I can’t catch my breath, lose fine motor control, and start feeling faint. Drenching myself in water - the colder the better - every 20 minutes or so is the only way I’ve found to be productive above 100F. I feel like 100F is actively trying to kill me.

0F is where it starts getting difficult for me to stay warm without an additional heat source.

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-8 points

Celsius is for scientists and nerds, Fahrenheit is for normal idiots. It’s not rocket surgery.

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12 points

This makes a lot of sense, and why I’d never survive in Canada.

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8 points

As a Canadian idk why your using us an an example, we are wrong to do so and we blame Americans for giving us this bad habit.

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4 points

I just see it positively and choose to believe you’re in the process of transitioning to enlightenment (metric). ;)

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5 points

Outdoor temperature in °C, unless you’re talking about an outdoor pool then it’s often enough °F :-)

I think part of the reasons it’s so mixed might just be due to how many Amero-centric devices and parts are common between the two countries.

Y’all can take your shitty Phillips screws though. Roberts is by far superior ;-)

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3 points

Imagine weighing people as big rocks, though.

Until the UK changes that, us Americans and Canadians can rest assured that nothing we are doing is quite that ridiculous.

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1 point

Tell me it’s 68f out and I will fight you.

Note to self: High heat levels make Canadians cranky.

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-3 points

then why are feet useful measurements of height when 90% of people are between 4ft and 6ft? They aren’t. You just know the scale in your head, so when someone says they’re 7ft tall you say “dang that’s tall”. That’s it.

to be clear, we use feet and inches, and there is historical precedent for breaking things down once they get past a certain grouping, we only have 10 fingers after all. To me the difference between 200cm and 220 is literally fuck all. You ask me the difference between 4 ft and 6ft and i can pretty quickly tell you.

I find it weird that when measuring height in metric, people using cm exclusively, i’ve noticed this a lot actually, people will use cm or mm in places where it arguably doesn’t make any sense. I could see the justification for doing math maybe, but like, that defeats the whole point of it being metric no?

Shouldn’t you be using meters and cm for height specifically? Since most people are a good bit over one meter i feel like it would make sense to do it that way. But then again that’s just kind of a shit bucket worth of options you have, ideally you would use decimeters, but nobody uses those things for some reason.

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10 points

Most of Europe just uses metres for people’s height. 1.67m, like that. I have no mental picture of that, so it doesn’t work for me. But they don’t seem to have any trouble, further evidence that it’s all just what you know.

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2 points

hm, that’s weird, i’ve seen this first hand in a handful of cases, guess i just get the weird ones. Granted i still see it holding true in things like construction, where i guess it makes more sense, but it seems weirdly arbitrary to me.

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8 points

I find it weird that when measuring height in metric, people using cm exclusively, i’ve noticed this a lot actually, people will use cm or mm in places where it arguably doesn’t make any sense. I could see the justification for doing math maybe, but like, that defeats the whole point of it being metric no?

Why is that defeating the whole point of being metric? If you know someone is 183 cm tall, you also know that they are 1.83 m tall. If its easier to say the length in cm, you do. No need for “one meter and eighty-three centimeters” or “one point eighty-three meters”, just “a hundred and eighty-three centimeters”. Often you just skip saying the “centimeters” part as well, because most people can see that you’re not the size of a skyscraper without getting a ruler out.

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1 point

yeah idk, i guess it’s just weird to me, because here in the us if you measured someones height in inches alone, you would be chased out of a room. We strictly use feet and inches, and then yards if referring to a more “broad” range. So you can very safely assume something is in feet and inches if its just two numbers stuck together.

I feel like i could very easily get confused with metric if i’m not running a consistent rule for default units. Seems like an easy way to get a random x10 error in there to me.

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3 points

To me the difference between 200cm and 220 is literally fuck all. You ask me the difference between 4 ft and 6ft and i can pretty quickly tell you.

To you. But you are aware that this is not the case for people (almost the rest of the world) who are using metric, right?

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1 point

To you. But you are aware that this is not the case for people (almost the rest of the world) who are using metric, right?

i mean i would assume so. But i have no direct reference to what 200cm is other than it’s somewhere about 6ft or 2 yards. something like 6’ 5" i think. I would need to know the height of like 50 other people to be able to make a relative distinction there.

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-22 points

If Fahrenheit is “how people feel” then why are feet useful measurements of height when 90% of people are between 4ft and 6ft?

Those are two different things. Hope this helps.

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24 points
*

It doesn’t help at all, it’s being intentionally obtuse. You know what I mean, it’s unhelpful to pretend otherwise and pick a fight over it.

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-2 points
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If an argument is being made for one thing, Fahrenheit, it’s not relevant to bring up a different thing. Why is feet a useful measurement? Maybe it’s not, we’re talking about temperature.

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-2 points

i still don’t see how this is intentionally obtuse, feet are a mid point between inches and yards, it just makes sense to break down things over a certain amount to a much more palatable scale. Everyone knows roughly what 1 ft is, and everyone knows roughly what 1 inch is. Paired together you can get a pretty rough and accurate guesstimate of height. I feel like it’s also pretty expected for it to be within the range of 4-6 ft. Most people don’t really measure feet outside of that range, unless you’re doing construction.

humans are a comparatively arbitrary height so i feel like you’re just complaining about the height of humans being weirdly arbitrary? Out of all the systems you could use for height, ft and in is pretty well tuned to the human nature, you’re not gonna do much better.

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89 points

The only good thing about Fahrenheit is that 69 degrees (20.5 C) is a nice temperature.

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63 points

And you can bake things at 420

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26 points

You could bake something at 420 Celsius too, assuming your okay with charcoal as the end product

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16 points

Or Pizza!

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9 points

ok you actually convinced me, Fahrenheit is better (except I can’t spell it properly without autocorrect)

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5 points

I can’t spell it properly without autocorrect

This is genuinely the most inconvenient thing about Fahrenheit

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7 points

you can also bake things at 420C if you’re not a coward about this (like proper thin pizza) (maybe it’s a bit too high but you get the idea)

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1 point

Well… If it’s only for a few seconds…

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1 point

You can make the temperature dial of an oven have matching degrees of rotation and degrees Celcius.

Turn the dial to point straight down to bake at 180°

Turn it 3/4 of the way to cook a pizza at 270°

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12 points

a 69°C cup coffee on winter is nice

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8 points
*

A cup of lukewarm coffee please.

Edit: my wrong, I thought it was 69°F !

All my excuses

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6 points

According to James Hoffmann, the ideal temperature to enjoy coffee is between 50°C and 60°C, he may know a thing or two about coffee, and you may think the coffee you drink is hotter that it really is.

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3 points

Also it’s a 0-100 scale of how hot it is outside, and it requires no prior understanding to use it as such.

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6 points

The freezing point of water is very important to weather, and requires prior knowledge of the arbitrary number 32.

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1 point
*

Is it? Only pure water will actually freeze at 0c. Rain, puddles, lakes, etc aren’t all that pure… And we’re talking about ambient air temps here. The air can be below freezing and it can still rain. And you can get snow/hail above freezing…

Knowing the freezing point is just one factor. Knowing it’s generally around 30F is pretty much always close enough (not that remembering 32 is actually very difficult)

Edit: also water only freezes at 0c if it’s at sea level… I really don’t think 0°=freezing is the huge advantage that celcius stans think it is.

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0 points

yeah, and let me know how accurate our weather models and prediction systems are. Can you calculate accurately how much the temperature in a specific part of the atmosphere will drop to a large updraft?

What’s that? This is literally an entire career field of study and development? Oh that’s weird.

Also the only real time this is relevant, is when things that have this weird property called thermal mass get below freezing, it’s snowing in 30f weather? That’s not sticking, the ground is too warm. or the sun will literally just melt it even if it is cold enough. Water? You mean that weird thing called like, a lake or river? Those get below freezing, without actively freezing, lakes won’t even drop that much in terms of temperature, aside from the surface level. The surface may freeze, but even that is pretty variable.

Also yes, it’s the arbitrary number of 32, so is literally every number though. We have 2 numbers to remember, you also have 2 numbers to remember, god forbid you have like, a password, or a passcode, or like, a numbers based lock somewhere. Humans have never been known to be good at memorizing short strings of data.

like idk how to tell you this, but, it’s not that big of a deal?

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-3 points

Okay so fahrenheit has a well-defined high and low, but an arbitrary freezing point of one certain chemical. All other chemical freezing points are arbitrary.

Celsius has an arbitrary high and low, but a well-defined freezing point of that same chemical. All other freezing points are arbitrary.

If your motivation is to minimize the amount of arbitrary values you have to memorize, fahrenheit is the clear winner.

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5 points

If that was true outsiders should be able to use Fahrenheit without much explanation. I’ve never got a clue what the °F values mean, I always have to use a converter. It’s really not as intuitive as people who grew up with it seem to believe.

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0 points

If that was true outsiders should be able to use Fahrenheit without much explanation. I’ve never got a clue what the °F values mean, I always have to use a converter. It’s really not as intuitive as people who grew up with it seem to believe.

because it’s all relative, and you need to actually know how the temperatures relate to the things you’re experiencing? I’m going to hazard a guess and say you’re comfortable with using celsius? Oops cognitive bias. You would have to test this on someone who doesn’t understand temperature yet. It just so happens that here in the US, it pretty conveniently lines up with those figures for us.

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4 points

Exactly. Fahrenheit is just metric weather.

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76 points

By that logic, Americans should use km/h instead of mph. Going 0-100 is much better than 0-60. For the same reason you keep telling us why Fahrenheit is so much more intuitive.

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8 points

You can go 100 mph

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28 points

You can also go 107 Celsius, for a while.

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11 points
*

You guys have a lot of Max 100 zones?

Because in km/h, we got lots of those

Also you calculate acceleration using 0-100 mph?

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7 points

I didn’t say it was legal.

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1 point

I think the highest speed limit I have seen in America is 85mph, which is around 135km/h. Typical highway speed limits though are 65mph, but everyone goes 5-10 over (105-120km/h).

The nice thing about mph is the whole mile a minute at 60mph. Makes it easy to mentally estimate time of arrival.

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0 points
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0 points

I think the more common measurement is 0-60 mph, so maybe thats closer to 1-100 in kilometers per hour.

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4 points

100mph is like, actually kinda spooky though. 100 kmh isn’t spooky. Also 60mph ties nicely into the seconds/minutes/hours time dichotomy, which is fun.

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3 points
*

Actually, it’s the other way around. 100 degrees F weather is really hot. Driving 100 MPH is really fast.

In metric we have 40 degrees C weather is really hot, and driving…uhhh… (gets out a calculator)… 160 km/h is really fast.

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18 points

Uhh and 100 ° C is also really hot.

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13 points

Plus, 100 km/h is also pretty fast.

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4 points

100°C is where you shouldn’t touch it anymore and 100 to 120 km/h is the speed limit about everywhere except germany.

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