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Metric Blues
Mon Oct 20, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton, and this is The Weather Notebook. Today, our correspondent Bob Henson
tells of a little skeleton in his meteorologic closet.
OK, it's time to confess. I'm trained as a scientist. I'm familiar with the virtues ofthe
metric system. I ought to prefer meters to inches. I should use hectaresover acres, go for
kilograms instead of pounds. But when it comes to
temperature, give me the good old Fahrenheit scale any day. Sure, it's a
goofy system. Back in the 1700s, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit did the best he
could. He poured a batch of ice water and added some salt so he could get
the mix below the usual freezing point. Once it got as cold as possible, he
dubbed that reading zero. But if Fahrenheit had used a different type of
salt, he'd have gotten a different number. And instead of making body temperature 100
degrees, he put the century mark just a little too high.
Now, let's compare that to Celsius. Zero is the freezing point. 100 is the
boiling point. How simple is that? What bugs me about Celsius is that the
divisions are just too big. Each degree Celsius is almost two degrees
Fahrenheit. I prefer the wide range of the Fahrenheit scale, where 95
sounds really hot and 2 sounds really cold. Still, a weather geek has to be
bilingual. Nobody else but the U.S. relies on Fahrenheit. So I'll use
Celsius when I need to. And if our country ever goes metric, I'll have to make the switch.
But I'll still remember fondly all those subzero lows and those
century mark highs. No one can take those memories away--not without prying
my fingers off the calculator.
Bob Henson lives a few milesnot kilometersoutside of Boulder, Colorado. The Weather Notebook
is supported by Subaru of America, and The National Science Foundation.
Today's Links
The Metric System
http://www.essex1.com/people/speer/metric.html
All You Will Need to Know About Metric
http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/misc/usmetric/metric-allyouneed.htm
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