Dear Predrag,

The unit degrees Celsius is now the only unit used for daily maximum and
minimum temperatures in Australia.

This is now so well accepted here that often newsreaders don't even bother
to mention a unit at all; they simply say something like: 'Tomorrow will
reach 25 after an overnight low of 16'.

I know that this is sloppy, but it means that centigrade and Fahrenheit have
now largely died out here.

This year, as is usual in summer, we had a number of days above 38��C and in
years gone by, some newsreaders have translated this back to 100�F, but this
year (2004) I noted that this retrofitting of old temperature units was
quite rare.

As a indicator, I suppose that the USA can expect a similar transition, from
Fahrenheit to Celsius, in about the same amount of time (30 years). I have
heard that the USA Weather Service changed to degrees Celsius in 1995, so I
suppose that by the year 2025 the USA will be fully operational in degrees
Celsius.

Cheers,

Pat Naughtin LCAMS
Geelong, Australia

Pat Naughtin is the editor of the free online newsletter, 'Metrication
matters'. You can subscribe by sending an email containing the words
subscribe Metrication matters to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--

on 8/3/04 9:31 AM, Predrag Lezaic at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Hi Pat, is it correct to say centigrade or celsius in English?
> 
> Predrag
> 
> Pat Naughtin wrote:
> 
>> Dear Ezra and All,
>> 
>> I guess that I converted 2 degrees centigrade to degrees Fahrenheit without
>> considering the minus sign before the 2.
>> 
>> I expect that you might do the same thing when it has been twenty or more
>> years since you've seen the word Fahrenheit, and more than thirty years
>> since you've seen the word centigrade. And maybe much longer since you've
>> done a conversion between the two of them.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Pat Naughtin LCAMS
>> Geelong, Australia
>>  
>> 
> 

Reply via email to