One of the differences between living in Canada and living in the US is understanding temperature readings. This topic actually came up while out for drinks with Americans (see previous blog post Drinking with Americans). One of the guys thought that Celsius made sense. It is a compact easy to read scale without a huge range (he was also from a science background). I concur. Celsius just makes sense. Whenever I hear the temperature, I have no sense of what it means until I do the conversion into Celsius. The other day, B.B. said, “It’s 19 degrees outside!” I did not have a response to this, but it felt cold. I later found out that it was a chilly -7 °C.
I remember growing up and my dad having to point out some differences between the metric and imperial measurements. He grew up during the time when people used the imperial form and from time to time, he sometimes talk about volumes of liquid in terms of quarts and gallons and distances in yards and miles. In Canada, the metric system came into effect in the 1970s although, the metric system was first legalized in 1871 when John A. MacDonald was Prime Minister (see The Canadian Encyclopedia).
In the Unites States, Farenheit continues to be the preferred form of measurement (for non-scientific purposes). So if you are a Canadian living in the States, you have no choice but to join them. Here are some comparisons to get you started:
- absolute zero
- -273.15°C -459.67 °F
- avg boiling temp for water
- 99.9 °C 211.9 °F
- the freezing point of water
- 0 °C 32°F
- avg temp. of human body
- 37°C 98°F
- avg June temp in Vancouver
- 19 °C 66 °F (avg high)
- avg June temp in Indianapolis
- 27.2 °C 81°F (avg high)
- avg Dec temp in Vancouver
- 1 °C 34°F (avg low)
- avg Dec temp in Indy
- -5 °C 23°F
- current Indy temp
- 1.3 °C 29.5°F (as of 8:40p)
- current Vancouver temp
- 6.1 °C 43°F
- temp to bake salmon
- 176 °C 350°F
- avg temp in my house
- 20 °C 68°F
- temperature of my tea
- 36.1 °C 97°F
As for measuring distances, I’ll just leave that for another post.