11 Jul
2012
11 Jul
'12
7:13 a.m.
On 6 July 2012 19:49, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Not a rhyme, but something I still use to covnert temperatures from
celsius to 'the understandable scale' (as one weatherman put it) is
'double it and add 30'. No, I don't use that whn calibrating a
thermocouple, or for colour photographic procesisng, or.. but for the sort
of temperatures used i neather forcasts it's accurate enough and is
trivial to do in your head.
How bizarre.
We're about the same age, I think, and in the early 1970s I was taught
both imperial and metric. I use a mix of both in my head - lengths in
feet make more intuitive sense than metres, distances in miles and
speeds in mph rather than km or kph, for instance, although I'm quite
happy in both. I can't remember how many yards in a mile or ounces in
a pound or pounds in a stone or any of that rubbish though, so I use
metric for all those sorts of things unless it's a direct comparison -
e.g. British male clothes are sized in inches so I just go with the
flow. I have a 38" waist and a 36" inside leg because that's what all
the shops sell. OTOH I'm 6'2" tall or 1.88m depending on who's asking
- either is fine.
But Fahrenheit never made any sense to me at all. One end of the scale
is entirely arbitrary, the other is an entirely different measure and
one that they measured wrongly anyway. It's seemed stupid and random
and senseless since I was a small child and I've never ever used it
for anything. Celsius is obvious and logical and rational. 0? is
freezing, 100? is boiling, bosh, there you are.
Fahrenheit is a scale where six apples equals one and a half times the
colour of the A three octaves above middle C, so long as it's a
Tuesday, and I have never ever been able to fathom (haha) it.
--
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