Emil Socks

It's so weird how degrees C and F are degrees but K are not degrees, they're just Kelvin. Which kinda makes them sound like a physical thing. Like, I have 2 apples, 50 liters of water, or 100 Kelvin. Let me just look in the cabinet to see if we have more Kelvin lying around

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the Hearth :ms_agender_flag:
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@socks also degrees Rankine *are* degrees for some reason
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the Hearth :ms_agender_flag:

@socks kelvin being not degrees makes sense to us though because it's like, you're measuring from an absolute value, not from an arbitrary reference point? you're measuring from zero rather than with an offset
-F

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Emil Socks

@Felthry So the offset is what makes something a degree? The possibility of having negative values? I don't think that's exactly right

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the Hearth :ms_agender_flag:

@socks i don't think it's right either but it's the arbitrary explanation our brain made up like fifteen years ago and that makes it make sense to us now
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shork

@Felthry @socks no that's exactly it

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the Hearth :ms_agender_flag:

@noiob @socks in that case °R shouldn't be right either but it is
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the Hearth :ms_agender_flag:

@noiob @socks not that anyone actually uses °R
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shork

@Felthry @socks if you're talking about the Rømer scale, how is that different from Celsius and Fahrenheit? You're measuring against an arbitrarily defined scale defined by two points

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the Hearth :ms_agender_flag:

@noiob @socks no i think that's °Rø, °R is rankine
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shork

@Felthry @socks it's really hard to look up single letters on Wikipedia

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the Hearth :ms_agender_flag:

@noiob @socks yeah sorry, i had mentioned it earlier and thought the context was enough
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shork

@Felthry @socks I guess Rankine is defined as a scale because Kelvin was already a thing and it isn't trying to replace Kelvin

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