this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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I believe the Fahrenheit scale was originally set up for 100° to be human body temperature. We're just built colder now I guess? I had to look up what zero was and apparently he originally set it at the coldest the air had ever been around his village, but later had to standardize it and so cooked up some brine that froze at 0°.
I would propose that 100 should be calibrated around the wet bulb temperature, which I think is around 105°F but varies with humidity. That's the temperature where sweating doesn't cool you off any more, so any temperature 100 or more is deadly to most people. I like 0 being freezing for water, seems sensible and is also a good "prolonged exposure to this or lower will kill you" cutoff point.
I heard it was supposed to be human body temperature, but they used horse body temperature instead because it was close to human body temperature but more... stable.
Straight to jail with you
the wet bulb temperature^1^ is just the temperature of a wet thermometer, and varies with humidity and temperature. Wet bulb temp is never higher than the dry bulb temp, so (entertainingly) you're proposing that the meaning of 100° varies wildly and is always lower than the true temperature, effectively making the air temperature always ≥100°, and increases when the air is drier, like some sort of inverse relative humidity.
^1^(I'm aware you probably didn't mean wet bulb temperature here, but let's have fun with the idea) :)