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Unit of Measurement of 2HOT Thermometer

Qwertyest
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Qwertyest

Qwertyest

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I always thought the Kerbin Thermometer measured in Celcius. But after sending a probe out to Jool for the first time, my Thermometer is getting readings of under -430. Considering this would be well below absolute zero if the unit of measurement was in Celcius, does the 2HOT Thermometer actually measure temperature in Fahrenheit?

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Themohawkninja

Themohawkninja

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Yeah, I wasn't sure if it was Fahrenheit, or if it was just bugs in the temperature model.

The temperature model needs about as much TLC as the aerodynamics model does, as you can stick a thermometer on an engine, but the temperature doesn't really go up all that much for being right next to all that heat.

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Kimberly

Kimberly

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I'm OK with arbitrary values, but what would 0 degrees be? What does it represent? Freezing point of water?

Zero degrees is the temperature on the Mun when exposed to sunlight. It drops to negative double digits in the shade.

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Kimberly

Kimberly

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Well, isn't that the problem with farenheit anyway?

No, Fahrenheit's base points are just as arbitrary as those of Celsius. It's designed using the melting point of ice and human body temperature, and was later revised to place the freezing and boiling exactly 180 degrees apart. The Celsius scale is just one that happened to become popular and was chosen when standardizing the metric system. (Probably in part due to the French fetish for decimalization--it's only natural that a 0 to 100 scale would be preferable to a people who wanted to revise the calendar to have 10 days per week!)

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Skorpychan

Skorpychan

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(Probably in part due to the French fetish for decimalization--it's only natural that a 0 to 100 scale would be preferable to a people who wanted to revise the calendar to have 10 days per week!)

I fail to see what's so shocking about that. It would make so much more sense than trying to count in sevens all the time!

But let's not derail this with metric versus imperial. I've already had this argument with my sat-nav today anyway.

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Cashen

Cashen

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No, Fahrenheit's base points are just as arbitrary as those of Celsius. It's designed using the melting point of ice and human body temperature, and was later revised to place the freezing and boiling exactly 180 degrees apart. The Celsius scale is just one that happened to become popular and was chosen when standardizing the metric system. (Probably in part due to the French fetish for decimalization--it's only natural that a 0 to 100 scale would be preferable to a people who wanted to revise the calendar to have 10 days per week!)

Actually the melting point of ice is still 0 Celcius. The Farenheit zero-point is the freezing point of a specific salt-water mixture. Zero farenheit is where, approximately, in cold climates, road salt is no longer effective in clearing roads (around -18C).

Celcius is more intuiative in that the original zero and 100 points are related to each other intentionally, rather than two entirely unrelated points, and water being perhaps the second most critical compound for life (aside from molecular oxygen perhaps) makes its use as a reference point understandable. And yes, factors of ten are also more intuitive because our numbering system already uses them.

The reference points for Celcius were later changed, definine -273.15 as exactly absolute zero, and 0.01 as exactly the triple point of water, both of which are absolutely fixed reference points.

Edited by Cashen
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Deddly

Deddly

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10 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Kelvin, by definition, cannot show a negative temperature.

That's what I mean. The older comments in this thread talk about negative numbers. Can anyone confirm that this no longer happens?

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