Heil The Socialist Camp.

Comrade Kane,

Regarding your question of September 28th.

"Is the United States of America the last country that uses the Fahrenheit scale."

Most people in the world use the Common Temperature Scale, often called the Fahrenheit degree temperature scale.

Most state regimes in West Europe, East Europe, Siberia & Britannic Islands, use Fahrenheit degrees & Centigrade grades together, or Centigrade grades only.

Most state regimes in West Europe, East Europe, Siberia & Britannic Islands, refer to the Centigrade grade temperature scale, as the Celsiusgrade grade temperature scale. You may be suprised to hear that this causes no confusion at all. That is because of two lucky factors.

Firstly, no one in West Europe, East Europe, Siberia or Britannic Islands has ever heard of Celsius or his Celsiusgrade grade temperature scale. Despite Celsius being a native son, having been born in the Kingdom of Sweden & Norway.

Secondly, the rest of the world has not used the Celsiusgrade grade temperature scale invented by Celsius, for 200 years.

Whenever it gets cold, people use the Fahrenheit degree temperature scale solely. That is because the Centigrade grade temperature scale shares exactly the same defect as the Reaumurgrade grade temperature scale. 0 Ct. & 0 R. are both fixed at the melting point of ice, and as soon as it gets cold you are into negative temperatures and potentially deadly mistakes.

An inconsequential point is that people usually refer to 0 R., 100 C., & 0 Ct. as the freezing point of water. Obviously that is wrong, only the Fahrenheit degree temperature scale uses the freezing point of water, which is 32 F.

The scales of Reaumurgrade 0 R., Celsiusgrade 100 C., and Centigrade 0 Ct. use the melting point of ice.

Although Celsiusgrade was safe for public use, people found it annoying because when it got hot, they expected temperatures to go up, not down. And when it got cold, they expected temperatures to go down, not up. Obviously the Celsiusgrade grade temperature scale was useless for scientific work.

Until the creation of the Rankine degree temperature scale and the Kelvingrade grade temperature scale, only the Fahrenheit degree temperature scale was used for scientific work.

Rankine is fixed at absolute zero, using Fahrenheit degrees, making the freezing point of water 32 F. = 491.67 Rankine degrees.

Kelvingrade is fixed at absolute zero, using Centigrade grades, making the melting point of ice 0 Ct. = 273.15 Kelvingrade grades.

Fahrenheit degree - scientific use & public use
Reaumurgrade grade - scientific use (obsolete)
Celsiusgrade grade - public use (obsolete)
Centigrade grade - scientific use
Rankine degree - scientific use
Kelvingrade grade - scientific use

If you ever decide to try to tangle with the Centigrade grade temperature scale you must remember four things:

Centi always means 1/100 of one
Hecto always means 100 ones
Centigrade always means 100 ones
temperatures above 0 Ct. must always say "plus" beforehand

If you need more help, see site:

http://www.weights-and-measures.com

And topics:

Common Temperature Scale
1st, 2nd, & 3rd Consulate Republic of France Temperature Scale
Napoleon Emperor's Republic of Europe Decadent Temperature Scale
MacMahon 3rd Marshalate Republic of France Decadent Temperature Scale

P.S.
Comrade Kane,
By the way, just which Socialist Camp do you belong to.
Nationalist Socialist Peoples' Labour Third Empire of Germany
Democratic Socialist Peoples' Labour Republic of Germany
Catholic Socialist Peoples' Labour Holy Empire of Austria & Hungary

*Everyone* has heard of the celcius grade system. In fact, it is supposed to be used instead of centigrade, but is not, in practice.

Most of the world does not use Fahrenheit. Sadly, we are scarcely using fahrenheit now.

I must confess that everytime I read his posts, it enrages me that he'e trying to "inform" people with completely made-up stuff.

Ralf

I'm no scientist, but I always use celcius. I'm not from any "Anglo-Saxon" country but have lived in the UK for the best part of 14 years. I have some understanding of the imperial system and can just about get by in it, albeit with some difficulty (which is why I prefer metric anyways). Yesterday I was in a Waitrose supermarket and was about to ask for some sausages. They were sold by kilo or per pound. I couldn't visualise what a kilo or a pound looked like, so just got them from the freezer cabinet, already packed (so you see, can't always visualise metric either).

However, when it comes to temperature then it's always celcius for me. So much easier to understand what's being spoken about too, i.e. is a given temperature hot, boiling, cold or just plain freezing? It's hard to convert betweeen farenheit and celcius too, i.e. 10 degrees C is 50 degrees F but 20 degres C is certainly not 100 degrees F. The only thing I actually know about farenheit is the fact that 98.6 is body temperature and that a daytime temperature of anything above 70 farenheit could be considered to be warm. Winter, for me, is when the temperature rarely exceeds 10 degrees C.

xcole - what planet are you from?

Strange that as soon as the temperature in the U.K. approaches 80oF, even the metrically-programmed BBC weathermen suddenly start talking of temperature in the 'eighties' and 'nineties'

QUOTE: "An inconsequential point is that people usually refer to 0 R., 100 C., & 0 Ct. as the freezing point of water. Obviously that is wrong, only the Fahrenheit degree temperature scale uses the freezing point of water, which is 32 F...The scales of Reaumurgrade 0 R., Celsiusgrade 100 C., and Centigrade 0 Ct. use the melting point of ice".

So, will an ice cube in a freezer set at 0 degrees centigrade melt? How can it melt, if 32F is freezing and 32F is equal to 0 degrees Centigrade?

Oh dear. Just to keep xcole from confusing anyone too much, I'd better point out that Centigrade is the old metric scale, with freezing point at 0ºC and boiling point at 100ºC. It is now, strictly speaking, obsolete, having been replaced by the technically non-metric Celsius scale, which is defined as having zero at freezing point (273.15K) and 1Cº=1K. Boiling point is no longer exactly 100ºC (though it's close enough for all practical purposes).

So zero Centigrade and zero celsius are the same , yes?

I always thought they were basically the same thing (i.e. 1=1)

Zero degrees Centigrade and Zero degrees Celsius are the same, but 100 degrees Centigrade is not exactly the same as 100 degrees Celsius, since it's defined by a different route. But for practical purposes the two scales are interchangeable.

Thanks paul,

that's cleared that one up.

Thanks for that Paul,
I always thought the "Celsius" and "centigrade" thing was an English-specific one, ie just two different words for the same thing.
I wouldn't even know the german translation for "centigrade", I wonder if there ever has been one.
We always use "Grad Celsius", or just simply "Grad" as an abbreviation.

And no, xcole, we don't put the "plus" sign in front of it ;)

Ralf

"Grad" by itself could be confusing, since a grad is 1/100th of a right angle. Not that I've ever found a real use for grads; they're just one of those odd extra features you get on calculators.

I believe that the French used the "grad" as a measure of angle. What made it particularly attractive was that 1 grad latitude was approx 100km and that 1 grad longitude was approx 100 cos(lat) km.

The grad was not adapted at the prime measure in System International as it was not mathematically elegant - the "correct" angle in SI is the radian. However the degree, minute and second of arc are also "authorised" units.

Has anyone ever used minutes and seconds of an arc ?
When you're down to that level of accuracy, you either use radians anyway or say something like 45.342, right ?

Ralf

Am I the only person asides from Tony that knew the difference between celcius and centigrade? Deary me, I deserve a commendation, I do believe.

{However the degree, minute and second of arc are also "authorised" units.}

Do you seriously need someone to "authorize" you to use a unit?

Of course they do. The metric system is less about measurment than it is about power and control.

I mean, Paul.

<<
The metric system is less about measurment than it is about power and control.
>>

The metric system is certainly about power. It is measured in mW, W, kW, MW or GW depending how much power there is.

There are no specific units for control, but as any control engineer will tell you, you should use teh same units in your feedback loop as you are using in your feedforward loop.

"However the degree, minute and second of arc are also "authorised" units"

Great! I feel so free!

Hitler will be grinning in his "grave" - or wherever he is!

He's probably alive and well and working in a secret office in Strasbourg!

Yes, I've used arcminutes and arcseconds a lot. They are standard in astronomy and related fields.

{Hitler will be grinning in his "grave" - or wherever he is!

He's probably alive and well and working in a secret office in Strasbourg!}

You mean he's returned from the Hollow Earth?

What metric unit is used to measure the level of badness of jokes? :)

I think that decibels^-1 is a good measure. The lower the decibels (and hence the higher the decibels^-1) teh worse the joke. :-)

Decibels are logarithmic, so the badness of jokes would have to be measured in negative not reciprocal decibels (relative to the international standard eurojoke, otherwise known as the Common Agricultural Policy).

BTW, I would like to note that xcole is right.... ish. You see, the celcius system *ORIGINALLY* had boiling fixed at 0 and freezing at 100, but that quickly changed, and was also 250 years ago.

You're saying that xcole is talking about Celsius's original backwards temperature scale, that nobody much apart from him ever used? Not the modern Celsius scale, the SI replacement for Centigrade? That makes a bit more sense. If only xcole didn't phrase everything like a masonic mystery, and refuse to explain, we might have more chance of understanding him.

Yes, the man who create the celcius scale (celcius, presumably), made it so that 100 was freezing, and 0 was boiling. That was in the mid-18C. You may or may not have noticed, but xcole keeps refering to things in the present tense, when in fact the things he refers to are ancient and often obsolete.