• assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Is every location at the exact same elevation? Varying elevations have varying atmospheric pressures. You’ve got the Netherlands at 0 m elevation, and places in Bolivia like La Paz and El Alto which are ~4000 m elevation. That’s an atmospheric pressure of 101 kPa for the Netherlands and 57.2-69.7 kPa for the Bolivian cities (I don’t have the time to interpolate the data table unfortunately). This corresponds to a drop in the boiling point of water from 100 C to approx 86.5 C.

    Both systems have just as arbitrary reference points. They also both have absurd conversions – why isn’t it 100 seconds to the minute, 100 minutes to the hour, 10 hours to a day, 10 days to a week, etc? It would make my work so much easier if time was powers of 10, but that’s where metric stops?

    • Atomic
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      1 year ago

      Good thing that Celcius is scaleable with Kelvin, which is scaleable with Pascal and meters. So you can easily calculate very precisely what temperature the water will boil at depending on your elevation.

      Time is measured at a base of 12. Because it’s far easier to create mechanical watches on a base of 12.

      What is important is that it’s a standardized measurement. We all have the same second.

      I’m not sure if you’re trying to make arguments for Fahrenheit or if you’re just reciting your 7:th grade physics homework