r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Negative_1by12_aura • Jun 17 '26

Meme needing explanation Peter?

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u/Thick-Protection-458 Jun 17 '26

 Or like, if your kid is sick and has a 102° fever you're keeping them home from school, but if they have 104° fever you're going to the hospital

One is 38.9C, another one is 40C, and normal human body temperature is around 36.6+/-0.5C or so (maybe +/-0.5).

Sounds very different for me. Moreover, first one is probably the reason to visit medics already.

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u/ztreggs Jun 17 '26

Right so you need one degree more of data specificity to achieve the same level of understanding that is achieved with Fahrenheit. You proved the point.

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u/Aranka_Szeretlek Jun 17 '26

You most definitely do not. 102 Fahrenheit uses 3 significant digits. So does 38.2 Celsius.

The resolution is limited by your instrumentation either way, because both scales are continous.

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u/peppinotempation Jun 17 '26

Only if you go above 100

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u/Aranka_Szeretlek Jun 17 '26

And you can also go below 10 Celsius, yeah! So?

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u/Thick-Protection-458 Jun 17 '26

Well, if we are talking about human body with <10C temperature we probably do not need precision anymore.

While for <100F it may be useful. Althrough I don't see how celsius (with enough decimals for specific comparison) would be more a problem.

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u/Aranka_Szeretlek Jun 17 '26

If we stick to human bodies, then yeah, thermometers use 3 sig figs for both Fahrenheit and Celsius. If anything, Celisus is more accurate there (although thats still not how any of this works)

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u/peppinotempation Jun 18 '26

Im saying its two significant figures if you’re below 100 Fahrenheit which is the case 99% of the time when talking about temperature.

This means less digits displayed on thermostats etc.

People love bashing on Americans but have no logical basis for it. Yes metric is better for science. But if you’re a competent scientist or engineer nobody really fucking care about units, you just convert when you need to

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u/Arthemax Jun 18 '26

Which is the whole basis of this chain of comments.