Talk:1643: Degrees

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 19:00, 15 February 2016 by 108.162.214.59 (talk) (Surface temperature of Sun in radians, and sign my previous comment)
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Rankine is a good compromise. 173.245.56.65 14:11, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

0.173 rad = 10°. Now it could be 10°C (50°F) or 10°F (-12°C).--108.162.228.113 14:14, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

It should probably be noted that since 0.173 radians is equal to around 9.91 degrees, the temperature that Cueball gave is likely in 'radians Celsius', since 9.91 degrees Farenheit would be an unlikely temperature to occur, unless they're somewhere like Canada or northern Russia --162.158.152.59 14:17, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

It would appear that that's already been noted since I started writing that comment. Ignore me. --162.158.152.59 14:18, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Guys, we moved away from the Réaumur-scale: You can do the same for the Fahrenheit :-). --DaB. (talk) 14:20, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

And we all moved away from the Rømer scale (what Reumer and Fahrenheit were both based on), 0F is 0Rø, 100C/80Reu is 80Rø). We even moved from the 100C-0C to 0C-100C since Celsius was a (half) crazy Swedish scientist who thought Reumer made sense if it was based on 100 instead of 80, and 100 was the freezing point (everybody ignores the second part of his scale).162.158.114.222 17:07, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
Rømer was Danish -- Calling him Sweedish is an insult -- kind if the same insult as calling Cruz Canadian Spongebog (talk) 17:14, 15 February 2016 (UTC)


Considering how cold New England is today, I'm pretty sure it's Fahrenheit. 108.162.218.71 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Temperature is given in F. Look at which month it is. And how this is a darn cold winter (at least in Canada). 108.162.216.43 14:32, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

its currently 10F in the Boston area where Randall lives.
For people from the future, see this historical data page for the day the comic was released --108.162.214.59 19:00, 15 February 2016 (UTC)


What's with the "We lost a Mars probe over this" remark? 141.101.104.113 14:33, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

One of the Mars probes crashed into Mars because one of the NASA contractors[citation needed] was using US Customary units instead of SI units. Blaisepascal (talk) 14:39, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
Is there a reference for this ?? Spongebog (talk) 17:17, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
The mars probe remark is in reference to a mistake in switching navigational numbers from American standard to metric (namely in that they didn't) which caused the probe to slam into the surface of mars. If I remember correctly that is.108.162.238.78 14:43, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I used to think that physicists prefer Kelvin, which is of course sort of based on Celsius. Jkrstrt (talk) 15:28, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

If he used Radians Fahrenheit, then 1 would be very close to earth's historical mean temperature for the period 1951 to 1980. 173.245.55.64 16:19, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

That sounds like it could almost be useful.... What is the temperature on the surface on the sun in Radians ? Spongebog (talk) 17:20, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
96.08 radians Celsius, or 173.5 radians Fahrenheit. --108.162.214.59 19:00, 15 February 2016 (UTC)