I propose the body temperature of an average opossum as the fixed point for 100 because they are cute as heck. We shall call this unit Possigrade. And anything above 100 Possigrade should be called the ‘rabies zone’ and 0 Possigrade should correspond to 8°C, as this feels very cold when dressed inappropriately. In addition, there is now the Bakers Possigrade, where 100 corresponds to 27°C, as this is the temperature at which sourdough bread rises by about ⅓ in 5.5 hours.
But seriously: Celsius is fine. On Earth, we are primarily interested in water at atmospheric pressure. Too many things contain water (pipes, food, paint, etc) and they react differently at 0 °C than at 4 °C. For this reason, we deliberately avoid using water in applications that are regularly exposed to sub-zero temperatures. Water is simply everywhere, so 0 °C and 100 °C are important tipping points for general use.
Celsius is great for engineering because Things Happen™️ when water starts boiling or freezing. But most people aren’t engineering daily. Cooking temps generally dont require much precision and there are too many niche break points to easily factor: safe meat temps, refrigeration temps, oil smoke points, Maillard reaction, etc… Our chefs are basically screwed no matter what.
That leaves measuring weather as the most universal daily application. Celsius is not great because the temp outside your door is going to be between mid -20º and mid 40º. It’s nice to have water freezing at 0º (snow, frost, ice) but thats the only interesting break point. You could just as easily set 100º to be the temperature of the sun and have the same daily experience.
Humans are endothermic, which means being somewhere hotter than us is Not Good™️. That would be very nice to set as a breaking point for weather purposes, but unfortunately the danger varies wildly with humidity/airflow/personal tempature regulation/hydration/etc… If we set the triple digit break to indicate an unsafe body temp then we at least can approximate the danger and get a little bonus medical utility.
Mean body temp varies slightly based on several factors:
So set 100º to be one standard deviation over and its perfect for daily use. Checkmate Celciusts
Celsius is great for engineering because Things Happen™️ when water starts boiling or freezing. But most people aren’t engineering daily.
I’d argue that it’s more covenient to use a common scale for all applications of the same measurement than to have multiple different scales, just because that would eliminate all conversion concerns. Someone I know is in engineering school has switched entirely to using °C simply because that’s what they deal with at school anyway, to the point they don’t even write °C anymore in casual chats.
For other applications, it seems like the scales we’re used to are more or less arbitrary anyway, so that’s really just a matter of getting used to it. Some are used to calling ~70°F room temperature, others say ~20°C,
So if it matters for one case, but not so much for others, and we were to pick a single scale, I should think it would be ideal to go with the case where it does matter.
Or we just keep doing this thing where people use what they’re used to and we just quickly look it up or someone comments with the conversion and move on with our lives.
Perrsonally I set 100° Egg (or 100°E) to equal 180°F because that’s how much i want to heat my egg when i am making ice cream. Gets you a good, custardy base for your ice cream machine.
I would also accept °Icecreams or °Is as the units
zero would be 20°F because that is Ice Cream’s proper storage temperature.
Humans are endothermic, which means being somewhere hotter than us is Not Good™️.
Endothermic refers to the ability of the organism to regulate it’s temperature, not just the ability to generate heat, but also to cool itself down. We humans are so good at it, that we can literally just jog prey down in hot environments and pretty much all animals will overheat before we do.
Hell, in my apartment there’s a room especially for making it very hot and humid. Even above 100c, and I still don’t boil. Weird, huh?
cooking temps generally don’t require much prevision
Hell, in my apartment there’s a room especially for making it very hot and humid. Even above 100c, and I still don’t boil. Weird, huh?
And I bet that room has its own thermostat, fuel, and doesn’t reach that temperature without human input. How often is the average human stepping into a sauna that it needs to be considered on a common use scale? The hottest recorded temperature on earth is 56°C, why would our daily scale need to be pegged 78% higher than that?
Endothermic refers to the ability of the organism to regulate it’s temperature, not just the ability to generate heat
Exactly! So we have 8.3 billion self-adjusting thermostats set to [nearly] the same target no matter their environment. Unlike the freezing temp, water’s boiling point can vary wildly on Earth. If I forget to check the altitude I could mistakenly think my boiling teapot is at 100°C instead of 68°C.
Home cooking usually depends way more on your ingredients and the quirks of your appliances than your target temp. Maybe your kitchen is a little more humid today and this batch of cookies is more chewy than yesterday. That’s why many recipes give hints on target texture or look (crispy, soft, golden brown…). But yes if you want a very specific outcome you’ll care much more about temp accuracy.
And I bet that room has its own thermostat, fuel, and doesn’t reach that temperature without human input.
I don’t manage to see your point. If the point is “you can’t live in places which are hotter the average body temp”, then should I point you towards Australasia? Also, in my last apartment, I didn’t have a sauna, but I did have a kitchen that was constantly above 40 and topped out my 52c meter in my kitchen.
considered on a common use scale?
Only an American things measuring things in average horse blood temperature vs when water boils at sealevel is a “common use scale”.
A “common” use scale for you less metrically abled; “fucking freezing”, “freezing”, “cold”, “cool”, “okay”, “a bit warm” “too hot” “fucking scorching”.
The hottest recorded temperature on earth is 56°C
You mean the hottest ambient temperature measured not from direct sunlight. Yeah, maybe. Still a bit more than our body temp, no?
water’s boiling point can vary wildly on Earth.
Yeah, but 100c doesn’t. It’s always the temperature at which pure water boils at sea level.
If I forget to check the altitude I could mistakenly think my boiling teapot is at 100°C instead of 68°C.
Sure yeah, you sound like a guy who might have a problem like that. Luckily for you, kettles don’t actually have thermostats set to 100c. They shut off when the water is boiling, despite the temperature. So people like you have been accounted for, rest assured. Nor will you be needing to make any thermometers either.
quirks of your appliances
So you microwave shit and then think temp doesn’t matter? I don’t really “appliances”. Is a grater an appliance? A manual one? Knives a few pans, ingredients. Thermometer. Perhaps if you’ve actually been doing a dish for 20 years perfectly you can forget about but it but it’s an absolute must for most kitchen professionals; good measuring instruments. A scale and a thermometer, mainly. Don’t really need anything else. Don’t even need that to cook, obviously. But because of the “quirks of your appliance”, you probe your meat, to meet the right temp. Damn I made myself hungry. Well I got some moose in the freezer.
That’s why many recipes give hints on target texture or look (crispy, soft, golden brown…). But yes if you want a very specific
What’s way more important in cooking is actually the measuring than thinking you can just throw it together and wait until it turns whatever the description wants. If you want it good, you’ll measure it to the gram and use the correct temp. Which is a bit above our body temp again, but guess “cooking” isn’t included in “common use scale”?
☝️😬 Metric-stans when you suggest a theoretical tweak to Centigrade that makes it align closer with human-scale temps while preserving the decimal nature.
My main point is that we spend 90% of our lives wandering around in a fairly narrow range of temperatures. Every day we care about how we should dress or what precipitation to expect or what the high/low might be overnight or checking our apartment thermostat…
The general population only spends a fraction of that time caring about the temperature of anything else (look at a recipe->plug in the baking temp->move on). In a universe where we spent all our time measuring astrological bodies I would probably be arguing for the scale to be normalized around 100ºSol.
I boil water probably 2x per day and I have never once cared about the actual temperature of that reaction. If I dunk my hand in water at 85ºC or 99ºC its gonna hurt like fuck either way. A scale based around horse blood would probably be more tangible because I can actually tell when the mammal blood in my meat-sack body is feeling a few degrees cold/warm.
Stapling a scale solely to pure, scientific, idealized, elemental reactions is silly Enlightenment dogma. Unless we plan on using my theoretical scale for millions of years of human evolution, average body temp is nearly as constant.
So you just never cook anything? Because if you cook, your scale is longer. You have to heat your oven to 350+ degrees, whereas I’m just putting it to 180. So the scale is actually “aligned closer with human-scale temps” whatever your brainfart can be interpreted to mean.
we spend 90% of our lives wandering around in a fairly narrow range of temperatures
You do. You. Just like you think your brainfart is in anyway an improvement instead of just silly rambling without any sense whatsoever.
I have never once cared about the actual temperature of that reaction
Because you don’t live in Peru or the bottom of the sea, so you don’t have to, because you know it’s always pretty much exactly 100 for you.
A person with a stroke could’ve written your comment and it would be none the better.
Not one of your arguments holds any water; Centrigrade is a smaller scale, and a more logical one. Standing naked outside, most people would have a fairly good guess on when it’s near or below 0c. Or as English actually says “freezing.” You couldn’t even tell 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Literally most people in the world have never even experienced such a temperature. I have. I’ve also experienced -40 (where they meet.)
How many days a year do you spend in 0f?
Because in my country being below zero is more common than not. Both C and F, moreso C though, as “it’s closer to a human scale”.
So F is wider, cooking temps are double that of anything in double digits, no-one can even tell where 0f is and 100f is very much not close to the warmest things we handle in our daily lives.
0-100c is quite simple. Over or under, don’t touch with bare skin. (For non cooks stay below 60c though or you’ll burn yourself)
But I don’t need to argue. The works decided long ago.
Lmao no disrespect intended but I hope you take a break for some self care, we’re on a meme post and I’m pitching a hypothetical temperature scale that will see zero implementation or adoption ever. I think it’s fun to play with and debate but there’s no need to get heated about it
That’s the problem; you’re not actually pitching anything. You’re badly rationalising why your personal preference would be objectively better, and labeling it in a pseudointellectual bullshit that doesn’t make any sense.
I propose the body temperature of an average opossum as the fixed point for 100 because they are cute as heck. We shall call this unit Possigrade. And anything above 100 Possigrade should be called the ‘rabies zone’ and 0 Possigrade should correspond to 8°C, as this feels very cold when dressed inappropriately. In addition, there is now the Bakers Possigrade, where 100 corresponds to 27°C, as this is the temperature at which sourdough bread rises by about ⅓ in 5.5 hours.
But seriously: Celsius is fine. On Earth, we are primarily interested in water at atmospheric pressure. Too many things contain water (pipes, food, paint, etc) and they react differently at 0 °C than at 4 °C. For this reason, we deliberately avoid using water in applications that are regularly exposed to sub-zero temperatures. Water is simply everywhere, so 0 °C and 100 °C are important tipping points for general use.
Celsius is great for engineering because Things Happen™️ when water starts boiling or freezing. But most people aren’t engineering daily. Cooking temps generally dont require much precision and there are too many niche break points to easily factor: safe meat temps, refrigeration temps, oil smoke points, Maillard reaction, etc… Our chefs are basically screwed no matter what.
That leaves measuring weather as the most universal daily application. Celsius is not great because the temp outside your door is going to be between mid -20º and mid 40º. It’s nice to have water freezing at 0º (snow, frost, ice) but thats the only interesting break point. You could just as easily set 100º to be the temperature of the sun and have the same daily experience.
Humans are endothermic, which means being somewhere hotter than us is Not Good™️. That would be very nice to set as a breaking point for weather purposes, but unfortunately the danger varies wildly with humidity/airflow/personal tempature regulation/hydration/etc… If we set the triple digit break to indicate an unsafe body temp then we at least can approximate the danger and get a little bonus medical utility.
Mean body temp varies slightly based on several factors:
So set 100º to be one standard deviation over and its perfect for daily use. Checkmate Celciusts
I’d argue that it’s more covenient to use a common scale for all applications of the same measurement than to have multiple different scales, just because that would eliminate all conversion concerns. Someone I know is in engineering school has switched entirely to using °C simply because that’s what they deal with at school anyway, to the point they don’t even write °C anymore in casual chats.
For other applications, it seems like the scales we’re used to are more or less arbitrary anyway, so that’s really just a matter of getting used to it. Some are used to calling ~70°F room temperature, others say ~20°C,
So if it matters for one case, but not so much for others, and we were to pick a single scale, I should think it would be ideal to go with the case where it does matter.
Or we just keep doing this thing where people use what they’re used to and we just quickly look it up or someone comments with the conversion and move on with our lives.
I’ll agree to a single universal scale but only on the condition that -100º=0ºK
Perrsonally I set 100° Egg (or 100°E) to equal 180°F because that’s how much i want to heat my egg when i am making ice cream. Gets you a good, custardy base for your ice cream machine.
I would also accept °Icecreams or °Is as the units
zero would be 20°F because that is Ice Cream’s proper storage temperature.
edit: yeah i think we’re going with °Is
Endothermic refers to the ability of the organism to regulate it’s temperature, not just the ability to generate heat, but also to cool itself down. We humans are so good at it, that we can literally just jog prey down in hot environments and pretty much all animals will overheat before we do.
Hell, in my apartment there’s a room especially for making it very hot and humid. Even above 100c, and I still don’t boil. Weird, huh?
Alright. Sure. Yeah. Why not. /s
And I bet that room has its own thermostat, fuel, and doesn’t reach that temperature without human input. How often is the average human stepping into a sauna that it needs to be considered on a common use scale? The hottest recorded temperature on earth is 56°C, why would our daily scale need to be pegged 78% higher than that?
Exactly! So we have 8.3 billion self-adjusting thermostats set to [nearly] the same target no matter their environment. Unlike the freezing temp, water’s boiling point can vary wildly on Earth. If I forget to check the altitude I could mistakenly think my boiling teapot is at 100°C instead of 68°C.
Home cooking usually depends way more on your ingredients and the quirks of your appliances than your target temp. Maybe your kitchen is a little more humid today and this batch of cookies is more chewy than yesterday. That’s why many recipes give hints on target texture or look (crispy, soft, golden brown…). But yes if you want a very specific outcome you’ll care much more about temp accuracy.
I don’t manage to see your point. If the point is “you can’t live in places which are hotter the average body temp”, then should I point you towards Australasia? Also, in my last apartment, I didn’t have a sauna, but I did have a kitchen that was constantly above 40 and topped out my 52c meter in my kitchen.
Only an American things measuring things in average horse blood temperature vs when water boils at sealevel is a “common use scale”.
A “common” use scale for you less metrically abled; “fucking freezing”, “freezing”, “cold”, “cool”, “okay”, “a bit warm” “too hot” “fucking scorching”.
You mean the hottest ambient temperature measured not from direct sunlight. Yeah, maybe. Still a bit more than our body temp, no?
Yeah, but 100c doesn’t. It’s always the temperature at which pure water boils at sea level.
Sure yeah, you sound like a guy who might have a problem like that. Luckily for you, kettles don’t actually have thermostats set to 100c. They shut off when the water is boiling, despite the temperature. So people like you have been accounted for, rest assured. Nor will you be needing to make any thermometers either.
So you microwave shit and then think temp doesn’t matter? I don’t really “appliances”. Is a grater an appliance? A manual one? Knives a few pans, ingredients. Thermometer. Perhaps if you’ve actually been doing a dish for 20 years perfectly you can forget about but it but it’s an absolute must for most kitchen professionals; good measuring instruments. A scale and a thermometer, mainly. Don’t really need anything else. Don’t even need that to cook, obviously. But because of the “quirks of your appliance”, you probe your meat, to meet the right temp. Damn I made myself hungry. Well I got some moose in the freezer.
What’s way more important in cooking is actually the measuring than thinking you can just throw it together and wait until it turns whatever the description wants. If you want it good, you’ll measure it to the gram and use the correct temp. Which is a bit above our body temp again, but guess “cooking” isn’t included in “common use scale”?
☝️😬 Metric-stans when you suggest a theoretical tweak to Centigrade that makes it align closer with human-scale temps while preserving the decimal nature.
My main point is that we spend 90% of our lives wandering around in a fairly narrow range of temperatures. Every day we care about how we should dress or what precipitation to expect or what the high/low might be overnight or checking our apartment thermostat…
The general population only spends a fraction of that time caring about the temperature of anything else (look at a recipe->plug in the baking temp->move on). In a universe where we spent all our time measuring astrological bodies I would probably be arguing for the scale to be normalized around 100ºSol.
I boil water probably 2x per day and I have never once cared about the actual temperature of that reaction. If I dunk my hand in water at 85ºC or 99ºC its gonna hurt like fuck either way. A scale based around horse blood would probably be more tangible because I can actually tell when the mammal blood in my meat-sack body is feeling a few degrees cold/warm.
Stapling a scale solely to pure, scientific, idealized, elemental reactions is silly Enlightenment dogma. Unless we plan on using my theoretical scale for millions of years of human evolution, average body temp is nearly as constant.
So you just never cook anything? Because if you cook, your scale is longer. You have to heat your oven to 350+ degrees, whereas I’m just putting it to 180. So the scale is actually “aligned closer with human-scale temps” whatever your brainfart can be interpreted to mean.
You do. You. Just like you think your brainfart is in anyway an improvement instead of just silly rambling without any sense whatsoever.
Because you don’t live in Peru or the bottom of the sea, so you don’t have to, because you know it’s always pretty much exactly 100 for you.
A person with a stroke could’ve written your comment and it would be none the better.
Not one of your arguments holds any water; Centrigrade is a smaller scale, and a more logical one. Standing naked outside, most people would have a fairly good guess on when it’s near or below 0c. Or as English actually says “freezing.” You couldn’t even tell 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Literally most people in the world have never even experienced such a temperature. I have. I’ve also experienced -40 (where they meet.)
How many days a year do you spend in 0f?
Because in my country being below zero is more common than not. Both C and F, moreso C though, as “it’s closer to a human scale”.
So F is wider, cooking temps are double that of anything in double digits, no-one can even tell where 0f is and 100f is very much not close to the warmest things we handle in our daily lives.
0-100c is quite simple. Over or under, don’t touch with bare skin. (For non cooks stay below 60c though or you’ll burn yourself)
But I don’t need to argue. The works decided long ago.
Lmao no disrespect intended but I hope you take a break for some self care, we’re on a meme post and I’m pitching a hypothetical temperature scale that will see zero implementation or adoption ever. I think it’s fun to play with and debate but there’s no need to get heated about it
That’s the problem; you’re not actually pitching anything. You’re badly rationalising why your personal preference would be objectively better, and labeling it in a pseudointellectual bullshit that doesn’t make any sense.
Edit oh and don’t get “heated” then…?