Kelvin is superior for science and engineering but doesn't arbitrarily anchor the scale to the freezing and boiling point of water in the way Celsius and Fahrenheit both do.

273.15 Kelvin doesn't roll off the tongue like 0°C or 32°F.

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vintermann a day ago | parent | next [-]

It doesn't anchor the scale to water, but it still scales the scale to water since it's still exactly 100 degrees between its boiling point and freezing point.

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RajT88 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

32°F and 212°F roll off the tongue?

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jandrewrogers 2 days ago | parent [-]

Relatively speaking? Yes. Also, the layman rarely needs to know the boiling point of water. The freezing point is useful though.

For serious scientific and engineering applications the freezing and boiling point of water isn't actually 0°C and 100°C in most real scenarios.

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hibbelig a day ago | parent [-]

Doesn’t almost everybody cook? With boiling water?

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roryirvine a day ago | parent [-]

Yeah, but you don't need a thermometer for that.

Using zero as the freezing point of water makes sense for everyday use, and using the boiling point for 100 degrees does follow fairly naturally from that - but plenty of other potential reference points could have worked equally well.

That said, for all the American claims of "fahrenheit is more human", 100 °C is the temperature of a hot sauna so works much better as "the highest temperature you'll encounter in day to day life" than 100 °F.

	▲	RajT88 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> "fahrenheit is more human" This is among the least stupid claims us Americans make in defense of our measurement system.

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1718627440 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

You mean 273.15°K.