Temperature is the one place I’ll defend customary units.
0C and 100C aren’t particularly useful endpoints for everyday experience. You might as well base your temperature on the freezing and boiling point of Nihonium.
0F and 100F are at the extremes of human comfort scales–no matter how well adapted you are to either, everyone agrees those are either to damn cold or too damn hot–and therefore nice for talking about weather. It breaks down nicely into 10 degree chunks (ironically; the metric system is supposed to do that). If you use the shorthand “it’ll be in the 60s today”, then people will have an idea of what to wear without needing to be overly precise about the range.
It’s also better for precise cooking. A sous vide cooker that keeps its range within 1F of the target is much better than one that can keep it to within 1C. I suppose you could go down to milligrades, but nobody wants to do that, and now you’re getting too precise.
Then I have a rant about how metric should have been base 12 rather than base 10, but only math heads want to listen to that shit.
Temperature is the one place I’ll defend customary units.
0C and 100C aren’t particularly useful endpoints for everyday experience. You might as well base your temperature on the freezing and boiling point of Nihonium.
0F and 100F are at the extremes of human comfort scales–no matter how well adapted you are to either, everyone agrees those are either to damn cold or too damn hot–and therefore nice for talking about weather. It breaks down nicely into 10 degree chunks (ironically; the metric system is supposed to do that). If you use the shorthand “it’ll be in the 60s today”, then people will have an idea of what to wear without needing to be overly precise about the range.
It’s also better for precise cooking. A sous vide cooker that keeps its range within 1F of the target is much better than one that can keep it to within 1C. I suppose you could go down to milligrades, but nobody wants to do that, and now you’re getting too precise.
Then I have a rant about how metric should have been base 12 rather than base 10, but only math heads want to listen to that shit.