Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh Fahrenheit Clark, there's Chuck, Celsius Bryant and Jerry Kelvin Rowland is here with us too, And Dave is there a fourth measure of temperature? Mamuh, Muggy, Dave, Dave, Muggy see is here in spirit?
Yeah, I'm not sure what just happened.
To me, Muggy. That was great, Chuck, Uh.
Celsius and fahrenheit as something we've been talking about a little bit lately on the show. Sometimes we do that what do you call it, conversion, conversion, almost a transformation, the same thing. Sometimes we do that conversion. Sometimes we don't, and we you know, some people ask us to and sometimes we remember, so we apologize if we don't often do that conversion.
Yeah, we're selective, Okay, Yeah, because here we're here in the United States, which means we're all about farrenheight. So really it would just make sense for us to convert everything to celsius. Yeah, when we're talking about temperature, because basically the rest of the world is all about celsius. We'll talk about that in a little bit. First, Chuck,
I want to throw back. I don't remember what episode it was, but we mentioned a guy named Simohaya who is known as the White Death of World War two. He was finish and he killed like more Nazis than anyone else, and he was just a simple farm hand.
I think, yeah, I think that might have been a listener mail or something.
Okay, So we talked about how he would go out and shoot people even in weather as low as negative forty degrees farentheight, and that set off an avalanche of emails when people say, you didn't have to say fahrenheit because negative forty is the same in celsius in farrenheit. It's the only temperature that's the same in these two different scales. And we're going to talk about why finally, after all these years.
That's right and big thanks to HowStuffWorks dot Com and Jesslynshields and our old friend Patrick J. Kiger, because they put it in a very simple way that's very easy
to understand. Is that these two different temperatures they are and you know, we'll talk about the differences, but celsius is larger than fahrenheit, and so when that happens, as a runner who is faster than another runner, eventually you can lap that slower runner, and eventually Celsius will lap fahrenheit, and you lap fahrenheit at negative forty.
Yeah, and the reason why celsius is bigger than fahrenheit is because you have more of a temperature range compressed into a smaller scale, where Farrenheight has the same temperature range pulled out over a longer scale. The thing is is, even when you're talking about that, it still didn't quite make sense to me. I'm like, yeah, a runner can lap a runner when he's slower. I still don't quite get it. And then finally I looked up I looked it up on I think Quorra came back with the
best explanation. They said, think of it as a graph. So you've got Farentheight going up at one angle and Celsius going up at a slightly different angle. Yeah, if you zoom out long enough on that graph or far enough by that graph, eventually those two lines are going to connect with one another. Since they're spreading out from zero in different directions, they're not going to connect there, but they'll connect behind them in the negative And they just so happen to connect at negative forty.
Right, because Celsius is one. Each degree is one point eight times larger than fahrenheit.
Right, yeah, again, because there's more compressed into a smaller scale.
Right, and that's why you get different freezing and boiling points. Of course, everyone knows fahrenheit freezes at thirty two and boils at two twelve. Celsius is much cleaner and easier to remember because water freezes at zero and boils at one hundred.
Yeah. So if you really want to think about it, it takes much more sophistication and brain power to understand farentheight than celsia.
Oh for sure.
Yeah, as an American.
Uh so, if you were to do the formula for conversion, which we don't do. We just look it up and type it in our little wonder machines.
Yes, but now we can in our heads even.
Yeah, because if you have a U, if you want to convert from celsius to fahrenheit, you multiply that temp in celsius by that one point eight, which is what we talked about, was a difference in size, and then you add thirty two. It's that simple.
That's it. I mean, that's it. So for example, so I like I still if I see like a temperature in celsius something like I have no no idea whether that's cold, hot, whatever. But let's take twenty degrees celsius for example. You want to find out the farentheight equivalent. You got twenty, which is the celsius degree times one point eight. That equals thirty six, okay, and then you just add the thirty two. And the reason you're adding or subtracting thirty two is because you're trying to zero
out both scales. You're trying to even themount from the same starting point. So you either add or subtract thirty two, whether you're trying to convert to farent height or celsius. So in this case, twenty degrees celsius adds up to be sixty eight degrees fahrenheit, and then the same thing goes for celsius too. You just flip it around fahrenheit minus thirty two divided by one point eight, same thing.
And so if you do that same thing with negative forty degrees celsius, you get negative forty degrees farent height and vice versa because they intersect just at that one temperature. I love it now, it makes sense, yeah, or it does to me. I'm sure I probably just confused everybody.
How about we take a break in and we'll just talk a little bit about why America, like many things, is still hung up on using something that the rest of the world does not.
Right, just like the number of stars and the sky, there is so much stuck.
All right. I tease the fact that the United States of America and a few other places the Bahamas, Belize, came in islands somewhere else.
I think Palau.
Yeah, yeah, we use fahrenheit, and we stuck with fahrenheit, And it's just one of those sort of things that Americans stuck to when everyone else over time eventually went with celsius or centigrade. No one says centigrade, though, do they.
Well, that was Celsius's original term for it, but I've seen it some places eggheads call it centigrade.
A German scientist named Daniel Gabrielle Fahrenheit invented fahrenheit in the early seventeen hundreds, and a Swedish astronomer not too long I think, a few decades later, named Onders Celsius or was it Onders centigrade came up with celsius and was like, hey, everybody, this is multiples of ten. It's a lot easier to remember, works well with the metric system, so let's just use that exactly.
And the metric people were like, yes, it really does work. We're all about powers of ten and ten base counting systems, so let's go celsius. We're all in with you. And Europe just kind of started to go that way. But in the English speaking world, centered in the UK, up
until not that long ago, fahrenheit still reigned. And then finally in nineteen sixty one, the met Office in the UK said, hey, we're going to start talking about temperatures in celsius because we look a little backwards compared to our European neighbors. And then as that happened, countries that were still part of the British Empire, to one degree or another, get a degree. They started following suit and
converting to celsius too. But the US said, hey, King of England, Queen England, we don't care whichever it is. You can't push us around. We're sticking with fahrenheit.
Yeah, even though it's kind of funny here. The National Weather Service, the US National Weather Surface on the inside, they use celsius, but they don't broadcast it out. They broadcast it out as fahrenheit because Americans, of course, would be like, what are you even talking about with the Celsia stuff.
Well, not only that, I mean, if word ever gets out that the National Weather Service actually uses Celsius internally, Americans will show up with pitchforks and torches and just burn their whole building.
Down, led by Mo the bartender.
That's right.
He always led the pitchforks and torch crowd, which always show is very funny to me.
Well, that crowd's big drinker, so he wanted to make sure that he was in with them.
Yeah, but he was always right up front. I love that.
So you got anything else?
I got nothing else. This one was super short.
Yeah, it short stuff.
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