Originally posted by SillyRumours@6 July 2004 - 10:49
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<a href='http://www.base58.com/pics/penguin.jpg' (http://www.base58.com/pics/penguin.jpg) target='image'>Image Resized
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playing that game, are we?
there isnt really a picture. sooo.....
Weather A-Z - Weather and Temperature Scales By Bill Giles OBE
When the temperature is mentioned on the weather forecast it always opens up a debate on what scale to use; should it be Celsius or Fahrenheit? What I have found in the past is that all those with a scientific bent want the former, whilst many of us older folks prefer Fahrenheit.
I suppose this is because we have been brought up with that particular scale which seems to describe the warmth that we get in the summer time more graphically than Celsius.
Fahrenheit, (of the four scales that I want to discuss here - namely Celsius, Kelvin, or sometimes known as Absolute, and the lesser known Reaumur) was established by a German-Dutch scientist by the name of Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit in 1742.
Herr Fahrenheit used an ice/salt and water mix. Some say he used the Baltic Sea to get his reference point of zero and (although it was slightly adjusted later on) used the normal body temperature of a human being as 96 degrees. This gave the boiling point of water under normal atmospheric pressure, of 212 degrees.
This scale was adopted by both the United Kingdom and the United States of America and during the expansion of the British Empire was used in virtually all the English speaking countries of the world.
The little known Reaumur scale pre-dated Fahrenheit by over ten years and was developed by Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur, who set the scale of 0 degrees for the melting point of ice, and 80 degrees as the boiling point of water. This scale was primarily used in France, and although can still be found in some remote parts of that country, is generally accepted now as of no significance.
Anders Celsius developed the scale that is now in more common use than any other. It has changed over the years because Celsius initially used the melting point of ice as 100 degrees and the boiling point of water as 0. It was later turned the other way around into the scale that we know and use today.
There has been some confusion between the Celsius scale and the Centigrade one. In actual fact they are one and the same and in this country we referred to the Celsius scale as the Centigrade one (purely meaning 100 divisions) up until the 1960s, when it was decided by the World Meteorological Organisation that it should, henceforth, be called by the name of its inventor.
And finally the true scientific scale, Kelvin. This was developed by Lord Kelvin in the mid 1800s when he designated that there would be no negative values in it so 0 degrees was absolute zero, the point at which all molecular motion ceases. This equates to -273.16 degrees Celsius. In fact the Kelvin scale, used in all scientific calculations, is the Celsius scale plus 273 so that the boiling point of water is 373 degrees Kelvin.
So really there are two major scales in use today, Celsius and Kelvin with the notable exception of the United States who persist with Fahrenheit. But it is fascinating to see how we, in this country still hang on to the old Fahrenheit.
This is shown most dramatically in the newspapers who will talk about the cold weather in winter in Celsius ("A widespread frost with temperatures down to minus 10") and in Fahrenheit to describe a hot summer's day "what a scorcher, the temperature reached 94 degrees at Wimbledon") It is nice to hang on to the old ways, but I fear the days of Herr Fahrenheit are now numbered.