Show Navigation
Conversation
Notices
-
both C and F lead to such nonsense as "temperature has doubled/halved in just a few hours"
if it did, we'd be in deeper trouble. but that's how misleading temperature scales get with a zero that isn't really zero
imagine if we used height or weight units whose fake-zero was the height of the shortest adult and 100 was that of the tallest; or zero was the weight of the average baby at birth, and 1000 was the max weight recommended for a given elevator. or a speed unit whose zero was the normal walking speed of the queen of england's, and 10 was the running speed of bolt's at his peak. I'm walking at 2, you're running at 4, how many times faster are you going? (bonus points if the answer uses the twisted height unit to measure walking distance as well :-D
-
Reminds me of a riddle I heard in high school (around the time Canada switched to metric): If it's 0 Celsius here, and twice as cold in Ottawa, what's the temperature there?
Conflating both the #ZeroIsNotMinimum problem and a negatively worded question about positive values.
Think of "If it's 273 Kelvin here, and twice as cold in Ottawa"... would that be 546 Kelvin in Ottawa, or 136.5 Kelvin?
-
IMHO "twice as cold" is a riddle in itself :-)