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Short Stuff: Fahrenheit or Celsius · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh Fahrenheit Clark,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck, Celsius Bryant and Jerry Kelvin Rowland is here
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: with us too, And Dave is there a fourth measure
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: of temperature? Mamuh, Muggy, Dave, Dave, Muggy see is here
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: in spirit?
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure what just happened.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: To me, Muggy. That was great, Chuck, Uh.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Celsius and fahrenheit as something we've been talking about a
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: little bit lately on the show. Sometimes we do that
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: what do you call it, conversion, conversion, almost a transformation,
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: the same thing. Sometimes we do that conversion. Sometimes we don't,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: and we you know, some people ask us to and
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: sometimes we remember, so we apologize if we don't often
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: do that conversion.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're selective, Okay, Yeah, because here we're here in
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the United States, which means we're all about farrenheight. So
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: really it would just make sense for us to convert
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: everything to celsius. Yeah, when we're talking about temperature, because
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: basically the rest of the world is all about celsius.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about that in a little bit. First, Chuck,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I want to throw back. I don't remember what episode
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: it was, but we mentioned a guy named Simohaya who
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: is known as the White Death of World War two.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: He was finish and he killed like more Nazis than
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: anyone else, and he was just a simple farm hand.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I think that might have been a
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: listener mail or something.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, So we talked about how he would go out
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: and shoot people even in weather as low as negative
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: forty degrees farentheight, and that set off an avalanche of
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: emails when people say, you didn't have to say fahrenheit
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: because negative forty is the same in celsius in farrenheit.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: It's the only temperature that's the same in these two
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: different scales. And we're going to talk about why finally,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: after all these years.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: That's right and big thanks to HowStuffWorks dot Com and
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Jesslynshields and our old friend Patrick J. Kiger, because they
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: put it in a very simple way that's very easy
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: to understand. Is that these two different temperatures they are
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: and you know, we'll talk about the differences, but celsius
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: is larger than fahrenheit, and so when that happens, as
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: a runner who is faster than another runner, eventually you
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: can lap that slower runner, and eventually Celsius will lap fahrenheit,
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: and you lap fahrenheit at negative forty.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the reason why celsius is bigger than fahrenheit
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: is because you have more of a temperature range compressed
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: into a smaller scale, where Farrenheight has the same temperature
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: range pulled out over a longer scale. The thing is is,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: even when you're talking about that, it still didn't quite
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: make sense to me. I'm like, yeah, a runner can
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: lap a runner when he's slower. I still don't quite
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: get it. And then finally I looked up I looked
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: it up on I think Quorra came back with the
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: best explanation. They said, think of it as a graph.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: So you've got Farentheight going up at one angle and
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Celsius going up at a slightly different angle. Yeah, if
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: you zoom out long enough on that graph or far
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: enough by that graph, eventually those two lines are going
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: to connect with one another. Since they're spreading out from
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: zero in different directions, they're not going to connect there,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: but they'll connect behind them in the negative And they
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: just so happen to connect at negative forty.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Right, because Celsius is one. Each degree is one point
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: eight times larger than fahrenheit.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, again, because there's more compressed into a smaller scale.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Right, and that's why you get different freezing and boiling points.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Of course, everyone knows fahrenheit freezes at thirty two and
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: boils at two twelve. Celsius is much cleaner and easier
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: to remember because water freezes at zero and boils at
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: one hundred.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So if you really want to think about it,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: it takes much more sophistication and brain power to understand
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: farentheight than celsia.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Oh for sure.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as an American.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Uh so, if you were to do the formula for conversion,
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: which we don't do. We just look it up and
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: type it in our little wonder machines.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Yes, but now we can in our heads even.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because if you have a U, if you want
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: to convert from celsius to fahrenheit, you multiply that temp
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: in celsius by that one point eight, which is what
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: we talked about, was a difference in size, and then
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: you add thirty two. It's that simple.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: That's it. I mean, that's it. So for example, so
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I like I still if I see like a temperature
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  Speaker 1: in celsius something like I have no no idea whether
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: that's cold, hot, whatever. But let's take twenty degrees celsius
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: for example. You want to find out the farentheight equivalent.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: You got twenty, which is the celsius degree times one
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: point eight. That equals thirty six, okay, and then you
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: just add the thirty two. And the reason you're adding
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: or subtracting thirty two is because you're trying to zero
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: out both scales. You're trying to even themount from the
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: same starting point. So you either add or subtract thirty two,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: whether you're trying to convert to farent height or celsius.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So in this case, twenty degrees celsius adds up to
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: be sixty eight degrees fahrenheit, and then the same thing
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: goes for celsius too. You just flip it around fahrenheit
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: minus thirty two divided by one point eight, same thing.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: And so if you do that same thing with negative
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: forty degrees celsius, you get negative forty degrees farent height
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: and vice versa because they intersect just at that one temperature.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: I love it now, it makes sense, yeah, or it
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: does to me. I'm sure I probably just confused everybody.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: How about we take a break in and we'll just
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: talk a little bit about why America, like many things,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: is still hung up on using something that the rest
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: of the world does not.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: Right, just like the number of stars and the sky,
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: there is so much stuck.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: All right. I tease the fact that the United States
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: of America and a few other places the Bahamas, Belize,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: came in islands somewhere else.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: I think Palau.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we use fahrenheit, and we stuck with fahrenheit,
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: And it's just one of those sort of things that
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Americans stuck to when everyone else over time eventually went
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: with celsius or centigrade. No one says centigrade, though, do they.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Well, that was Celsius's original term for it, but I've
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: seen it some places eggheads call it centigrade.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: A German scientist named Daniel Gabrielle Fahrenheit invented fahrenheit in
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: the early seventeen hundreds, and a Swedish astronomer not too
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: long I think, a few decades later, named Onders Celsius
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: or was it Onders centigrade came up with celsius and
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: was like, hey, everybody, this is multiples of ten. It's
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: a lot easier to remember, works well with the metric system,
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: so let's just use that exactly.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: And the metric people were like, yes, it really does work.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: We're all about powers of ten and ten base counting systems,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: so let's go celsius. We're all in with you. And
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Europe just kind of started to go that way. But
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: in the English speaking world, centered in the UK, up
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: until not that long ago, fahrenheit still reigned. And then
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: finally in nineteen sixty one, the met Office in the
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: UK said, hey, we're going to start talking about temperatures
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: in celsius because we look a little backwards compared to
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: our European neighbors. And then as that happened, countries that
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: were still part of the British Empire, to one degree
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: or another, get a degree. They started following suit and
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: converting to celsius too. But the US said, hey, King
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: of England, Queen England, we don't care whichever it is.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: You can't push us around. We're sticking with fahrenheit.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, even though it's kind of funny here. The National
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Weather Service, the US National Weather Surface on the inside,
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: they use celsius, but they don't broadcast it out. They
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: broadcast it out as fahrenheit because Americans, of course, would
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: be like, what are you even talking about with the
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Celsia stuff.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Well, not only that, I mean, if word ever gets
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: out that the National Weather Service actually uses Celsius internally,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Americans will show up with pitchforks and torches and just
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: burn their whole building.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Down, led by Mo the bartender.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: He always led the pitchforks and torch crowd, which always
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: show is very funny to me.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Well, that crowd's big drinker, so he wanted to make
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: sure that he was in with them.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but he was always right up front. I love that.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: So you got anything else?
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: I got nothing else. This one was super short.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it short stuff.
• 9:04
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• 9:11
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