Just when I entered the United States of America I realized how different a lot measuring units were. Lets talk about the weather today. It is 71 deg Fahrenheit. Well I am used to Celsius. Then I found the following:
Fahrenheit minus 32 divide by 2 equals to Celsius &
Celsius multiply by 2 and add 32 gives Fahrenheit
Life was much simpler since. Fahrenheit was discovered in 1724 and Celsius in 1742 [wow! look at the years 24 interchanged to 42]. The entire world is now following Celsius except for Bahamas, Belize, Cayman islands, Palau and USA with its territories.Probably these countries find the conversion very costly in terms of change in every machine, vehicles etc.
On the Fahrenheit scale the water freezing point 32 deg F and water boiling point 212 deg F is exactly 180 deg apart. On Celsius the water melting point 0 deg C and the boiling point 100 deg C is 100 deg apart. Both F and C scales coincide at – 40 deg.
Currently the unit degree Celsius by an international agreement is defined by two different points – Absolute zero and the Triple point of specially prepared water. This is where the new scale Kelvin comes into picture. Absolute zero is the temperature where nothing can get colder 0 deg K or -273.15 deg C and Triple point of water is 273.16 deg K or 0.01 deg C.
A point to be noted is though the Celsius as discovered in 1742 the formal adoption of the symbol was in 1948 not to forget the usage in weather telecasts was done by BBC not until 1985. Kelvin however has not been well adopted.
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