I know that in both Canada and the UK, where the use of the Celsius scale is
now virtually universal (notwithstanding the anti-metric efforts of newspapers
like the Daily Mail), people in casual conversation usually use only 'degrees',
without identifying the scale. Even my 88 year old mother used to use, and
understand, Celsius, without it having to be explained to her that they were
Celsius degrees. On my travels through other countries, again, Celsius is a
given, and only 'degrees' is mentioned, again in casual conversation. You will
likely see 'C' in the written word. The use of 'degrees' only applied mostly
to the weather and other household situations (do we pour the hot water into
the coffee maker when it is still at 100 degrees or let it cool to 95?). It
might be necessary to specify the scale in a technical or scientific context,
such talking about how hot a soldering iron should be.
I think HAVING to specify which scale is used at all times is a problem unique
to the US.
And that suggests an idea to help with the US's conversion efforts. The near
universal use of the Celsius scale by the population in general in both Canada
and the US (and of course Australia etc) has been attributed to the difficulty
in converting between the two scales. People, instead of converting, just
decided it was easier to learn, and get used to, Celsius. Perhaps the US
should concentrate on those lines.
Incidentally, we've been enjoying some spring-like weather here in the UK, and
at our local coffee shop yesterday where we meet some friends, everybody was
talking about how warm it was - and all in Celsius, even though we are all
retirees. Yet yesterday's Daily Mail (I glanced through the shop's customer
reading copy while we were waiting for others to join us) just HAD to say that
the predicted high for today was going to be "64f" [sic]. Sad - I really
wonder why people buy that rag.
John F-L
----- Original Message -----
From: John M. Steele
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 12:38 AM
Subject: [USMA:50184] Re: Does it matter if we specify Celsius?
It depends. Generally, in the US, I would say no because both Celsius
and Fahrenheit are used. In a country where ONLY Celsisus is used, and NOBODY
would use Fahrenheit, I can see sloppy usage being OK. Maybe in Canada it
would be OK; in the UK, they use Fahrenheit in the summer (???).
Also in certain rigidly formatted reports, it may be OK. In aviation
weather, a report known as METAR gives temperature and dewpoint separated by a
slash (/), no units are included, but the report format requires °C, even in
the US.
--- On Thu, 3/24/11, Bill Hooper <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Bill Hooper <[email protected]>
Subject: [USMA:50182] Does it matter if we specify Celsius?
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Date: Thursday, March 24, 2011, 8:19 PM
Recently, one of our correspondents (it doesn't matter who) wrote
about temperatures and referred to values just in "degrees" without specifying
Celsius or Fahrenheit. (See excerpt below.) I know most of us on this list are
sufficiently aware of Celsius temperature values to know that he must have been
referring to Celsius degrees. My question is two-fold and I only have a
"one-fold" answer (for myself).
(1) Is it proper, in general, to omit the qualifier "Celsius" when
referring to temperature in Celsius degrees?
(2) Is it proper to omit "Celsius", when conversing with those who
are thoroughly familiar with Celsius temperatures, so that there would be no
danger whatsoever that the reader would mistakenly think the temperatures were
Fahrenheit?
I think the answer to #1 should be "no", although I can imagine
arguments to the contrary.
I don't know what I think about #2. Is criticism of the omission of
"Celsius" in this situation considered unnecessarily picky? Or is the use of
"degrees" alone without specifying "Celsius" so wrong technically that it
should be avoided even when there is no danger of misunderstanding?
(I admit that the problem disappears if we use symbols, " ˚C " vs. "
˚F ", but there are always situations where writing things out is preferable.)
Regards,
Bill Hooper
Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA
==========================
Make It Simple; Make It Metric!
==========================
On Mar 23 , a correspondents wrote:
In the summer, though, you can have the following temperature
gradients from
the beach in San Francisco: 15 degrees at the beach, 20 degrees
downtown,
25 degrees across the bay in Berkeley, 30 degrees east of the hills
in
Concord and Walnut Creek, and 35-38 degrees in Sacramento, over a
distance
of only about 120 km. As you can imagine this causes some REALLY
fierce
winds
