Talk:3001: Temperature Scales

Shouldn't Rankine say "0ºR is set to absolute zero"? 172.70.230.29 (talk) 22:58, 21 October 2024 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Yep. 162.158.186.253 04:38, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

yo,i thought comic 300 was anticlimactic so randall would make this one COOL but sadly not Same. Hope he does something cool for 3072.172.69.134.225 23:44, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

really he didn't do anything special for this either? come ON randall if you don't do something cool for comic 3072 i will come to your house personally and yell at you RadiantRainwing (talk) 23:57, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
What's random about Fahrenheit? (Answer: nothing.) 0F is the freezing point of brine, 100F (or 98.7) is the human body temperature. 172.68.54.65 00:00, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

What concentration of brine? (And which specific salt... No, not NaCl, as you might presume but NH₄Cl!)

And body temperature varies a lot ('typically' 36.5–37.5°C or 97.7–99.5°F, though even this range is thought to be too small), across genders, individuals, time of day and which orifices/surfaces you try to measure it from. (Originally, it was set so that 90°F was to be the 'best guess' of human body temperature. It gradually changed, including via various compounded misunderstandings so that the best you can say is that 100°F is arbitrarily slightly above most afebrile human body temperature measurements.)

Celsius might be a bit off (arguments about triple-point or STP freezing, etc), but it still has far more physical logic to it. 172.70.160.188 01:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, Randall, for my comfort, Fahrenheit is the least cursed. It's the best scale to use for my personal use, especially when hearing the weather report and deciding what to wear outdoors: temp in the 80's - no jacket. temp in 70's - maybe a windbreaker if it's breezy. 60's - sweater weather. 50's - medium weight coat. 40's - winter coat. 30'3 - winter coat with scarf and gloves. 20's - multiple layers. teens - stay indoors. None of the other scales provide such convenient distinctions for my daily life. Kelvin is great for astro physics or super conductivity, but useless for any common uses. Celsius is great for hanging out with the Euro crowd but still not so useful to scale my home thermostat. I judge Fahrenheit as 1.0 for cursedness. Rtanenbaum (talk) 14:19, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I'm most disappointed that Delisle scale was not represented... 172.70.160.188 01:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I was so hoping for a Planck temperature quip. Like: "Water freezing point: 0; Water boiling point: 0; Notes: 1 = highest possible temperature (1.4E32K) where thermal radiation creates black holes; Cursedness: 0/0" 162.158.164.184 01:27, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Same here. Freezing is 0.000000000000000000000000000001928 and boiling is 0.0000000000000000000000000000026338. DanielLC (talk) 03:38, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Wow, those are even smaller than the IEEE floating point representations of 1-1.0/3*3! 162.158.90.109 03:59, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I guess I was wrong in my comment on the last comic. sigh. -P?sych??otic?pot??at???o (talk) 01:16, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

It's actually spelled Wedgwood scale, not Wedgewood. Wilh3lm (talk) 01:17, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I still call the modern version of the "Celsius" scale "centigrade", but if people start nitpicking, I'm happy to switch to "Carolus" to avoid ambiguity. For some reason that tends to annoy people more though. 172.68.22.191 01:32, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Every temperature scale is equally "random" as every other scale. People always say that Celsius is so much better because it's defined by the phase changes of water. Okay, cool...why should THAT of all things be what we use as the base for a system of temperature measurement? And, who cares? I'm a Homo sapiens, not a water molecule. If anything we should use the freezing and melting points of humans as our two reference points for temperature (which, I must say, Fahrenheit approximates better than Celsius, assuming 0 and 100 are your points "A" and "B"). Pie Guy (talk) 03:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Every temperature scale is arbitrary, but since boiling and freezing water is a thing humans have a lot of experience with it makes sense to use that as the reference point. At least it makes more sense than whatever the coldest recorded temperature in Fahrenheit's home town was, because he didn't like negative numbers 172.70.250.23 03:56, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Planck temperature (as above) is probably the least arbitrary, and some would say it is to some extent free from arbitrariness. However, it's completely impractical for everyday use (as above.) 172.69.34.138 04:31, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Do the physics of black holes or neutron stars involve Planck temperatures greater than 0.0000001? Liv2splain (talk) 07:23, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Chat Gippity told me:

Black holes and neutron stars do not typically involve temperatures reaching the Planck scale. While both objects exhibit extreme physical conditions, their temperatures are far below the Planck temperature, even though they can be incredibly high compared to everyday phenomena.

- **Neutron stars** have surface temperatures in the range of millions of Kelvin, and the core can reach even higher, possibly up to a few billion Kelvin. These temperatures are still vastly lower than the Planck temperature.

- **Black holes**, especially the smaller ones, can emit Hawking radiation, with temperatures inversely proportional to their mass. However, the temperature of even a very small black hole is still far below the Planck temperature. Hawking radiation is not expected to reach temperatures close to the Planck scale under normal circumstances.

The Planck temperature (TP=1) represents an energy scale so extreme that no known physical models, including those describing black holes and neutron stars, operate near or above this threshold. Temperatures reaching **0.0000001 TP** (or 1.416 × 10^26 K) would still be beyond current observational and theoretical frameworks related to these cosmic objects. A quantum theory of gravity would be required to describe physics at or near the Planck temperature, which remains speculative and is far beyond the conditions found in black holes or neutron stars.

Liv2splain (talk) 08:46, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

If the °X scale is based on the temperatures of Earth from all time (for some definition of "Earth"), then the scale is very hard to define and highly impractical. The earth appears to have gotten to more than 2,300 Kelvin (hot enough to melt steel and platinum and to boil lead) and while I can't find any sources for the lowest temperature, I imagine it is lower than -100°C. The recorded minimum, maximum and average temperatures appear to be around -89.2 °C, 56.7 °C and 15 °C respectively. This would make the scale somewhat useful, but this would make typical values between 41 °X (cold winter's day) and 68 °X (hot summers day) which I think is pretty cursed. I recommend the clearly superior °Y, based around average temp at 0 °Y, low at -100 °Y and high at 100 °Y. These would be measured by the yearly high, low and mean temperatures averaged per person. Then saying "It's 2 times colder than yesterday" would have some reasonable meaning. --198.41.236.147 04:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

"Record ... surface temperature" implies it was recorded. 172.68.22.9 04:08, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

How do you all feel about adding an additional column for room temperature 22C/72F?

Unit	Room temperature
Celsius	22
Kelvin	295
Fahrenheit	72
Réaumur	18
Rømer	18
Rankine	531
Newton	7
Wedgwood	-7
Galen	0
Real Celsius	78
°X	58

Or 0.00000000000000000000000000000208 °Planck, lol. 108.162.245.211 05:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I feel like decigalens would be the most practical unit. Who's with me? 162.158.186.5 06:20, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

It's interesting; calculating the equilibrium temperature (with 2.05 and 4.24 being used for the heat capacities of ice and boiling water) gives 67... If I use water that's about to freeze and steam, I get 31. 172.69.0.178 07:59, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Would you please explain in more detail? Liv2splain (talk) 09:03, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Question regarding the X scale - when it‘s defined by *three* (somewhat, implying average is real and not just calculated by (max-min)/2)) independent points, how will linearity be achieved? 162.158.155.76 05:43, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Or click "[Expand]" in the bottom right table cell Derivation.

Please see 2701: Change in Slope. 172.70.206.179 05:50, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Sure, "a linear scale between each point":

Here you go. Liv2splain (talk) 06:33, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

The reference for the average surface temperature, https://www.space.com/17816-earth-temperature.html, suggests it has increased above 15°C. What value should we use in late 2024? Liv2splain (talk) 07:30, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

The World Meteorological Organization, Carbon Brief, and Copernicus Climate Change Service suggest 17.16°C. Liv2splain (talk) 07:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Updated water temperatures, Derivation, and graph. So we've already had more than the +2°C warming we were trying to avoid in 2019? Liv2splain (talk) 08:05, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Regarding [1], are the average surface temperatures from the sources supposed to be yearly or overall averages? Liv2splain (talk) 09:06, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

where is the interactive epic 3000 comic we should've gotten? This one's cool but 1000 seemed to have more effort in it and 2000 was at least tangetially related. Does Randall just not like making these anymore and is only making more comics as a business? 108.162.238.185 12:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Is this the first list-style comic where every single entry is real? (Usually he has several joke entries.) 172.70.114.182 14:26, 22 October 2024 (UTC)