June 28, 2023 • 9 mins
Fahrenheit or Celsius? Why not both? If they can agree - exactly at -40 degrees - then it seems like we should all be able to agree they're both great as well.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
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?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, I'm not sure what just happened.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
To me, Muggy. That was great, Chuck, Uh.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
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
(00:54):
do that conversion.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
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
(01:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I think, yeah, I think that might have been a
listener mail or something.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
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
(01:51):
different scales. And we're going to talk about why finally,
after all these years.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
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
(02:16):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
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
(02:53):
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
(03:14):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Right, because Celsius is one. Each degree is one point
eight times larger than fahrenheit.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Right, yeah, again, because there's more compressed into a smaller scale.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah. So if you really want to think about it,
it takes much more sophistication and brain power to understand
farentheight than celsia.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, as an American.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yes, but now we can in our heads even.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
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
(04:54):
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
(05:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Right, just like the number of stars and the sky,
there is so much stuck.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I think Palau.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Well, that was Celsius's original term for it, but I've
seen it some places eggheads call it centigrade.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
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
(07:13):
a lot easier to remember, works well with the metric system,
so let's just use that exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
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
(07:43):
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
(08:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Down, led by Mo the bartender.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
He always led the pitchforks and torch crowd, which always
show is very funny to me.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Well, that crowd's big drinker, so he wanted to make
sure that he was in with them.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah, but he was always right up front. I love that.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
So you got anything else?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I got nothing else. This one was super short.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, it short stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
So Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, I'm not sure what just happened.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
To me, Muggy. That was great, Chuck, Uh.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
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
(00:54):
do that conversion.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
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
(01:16):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
I think, yeah, I think that might have been a
listener mail or something.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
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
(01:51):
different scales. And we're going to talk about why finally,
after all these years.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
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
(02:16):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
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
(02:53):
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
(03:14):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Right, because Celsius is one. Each degree is one point
eight times larger than fahrenheit.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Right, yeah, again, because there's more compressed into a smaller scale.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah. So if you really want to think about it,
it takes much more sophistication and brain power to understand
farentheight than celsia.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, as an American.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yes, but now we can in our heads even.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
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
(04:54):
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
(05:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Right, just like the number of stars and the sky,
there is so much stuck.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I think Palau.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Well, that was Celsius's original term for it, but I've
seen it some places eggheads call it centigrade.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
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
(07:13):
a lot easier to remember, works well with the metric system,
so let's just use that exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
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
(07:43):
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
(08:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Down, led by Mo the bartender.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
He always led the pitchforks and torch crowd, which always
show is very funny to me.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Well, that crowd's big drinker, so he wanted to make
sure that he was in with them.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah, but he was always right up front. I love that.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
So you got anything else?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
I got nothing else. This one was super short.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, it short stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
So Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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