Re: OT: Rant about degres Celsius (was: introduction)

On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Muke Tever wrote:

> From: "Tristan Alexander McLeay" <anstouh@...>
> > Does anyone know why degrees Celsius is such an irregular measurement?
> > It's the only measurement capitalised, it's formed from two parts, it's
> > the part of a limited group of (two) measurements (angle and degrees
> > Celsius) that should be written with the symbol attached to it, it's
> > obeys different rules in Dutch Grammar...
>
> Well, it's capitalized because it's named after someone; there is a
> non-capitalized, generic version: 'centigrade'.
Firstly, I think that `centigrade' is non-standard, I've seen a number of
things recommending it not be used. The kelvin, joule, coulomb, watt and
newton (to name a few) are all named after people, but only their symbols
are capitalised (K, J, C, W, N). (L for litre and B for byte are also
exceptional in that their symbols are capitalised but they aren't derived
from proper nouns, but L used to be a script l and Americans don't use the
metric system, so how are they supposed to know about intracacies that few
people who _do_ use it do.

> By "two parts" I suppose that means "degrees" and "Celsius"; 'degree'
> is just the name of the unit and 'Celsius' an adjective saying what
> scale the unit is on (because degrees are used also to measure angles,
> in the Fahrenheit scale, and some people will even say weird things
> like "degrees kelvin").
The kelvin is not used as two parts: absolute zero is zero kelvin (or
`0 K' if you prefer). Why should the degree be used to measure two
unrelated things, anyway? (Apparently, the lack of the `degrees' in
`kelvin' is because the degrees symbol is used in some languages to mean
something, or so says my chem teacher.

> As for the symbol attached, it probably doesn't count separating angle and
> temperature degrees as it's the same symbol ;p
>
> (My question: Is it only because we write[1] things like "99°F"
> degrees Fahrenheit" and not "99 Fahrenheit degrees"?  Or is it foreign
> influence?  Or both?)
Well, we don't say `dollars four' even though we right^H^H^H^H^Hwrite
`$4', so I assume there's something else there two.


Tristan

anstouh@yahoo.com.au

War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
                       - BSD Games' Fortune

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