Thanks

A couple of months ago I posted, asking for suggestions for a gift to send
an Englishman. Someone suggested an indoor/outdoor thermometer. I bought
one, and it was a big success. He has mentioned it many times. After I had
wrapped it, I realized that we use Fahrenheit and they use Centigrade.
After Christmas I mentioned that in an email, saying I hoped he knew a good
way of converting. He responded that, not only is there a button on the
thermometer to switch back and forth, but he grew up with Fahrenheit and is
more comfortable with that.

Anyway, thanks to whoever made the suggestion.

--
Joy

**Don't believe everything you think**

"Yoj" wrote in message
news
A couple of months ago I posted, asking for suggestions for a gift to send
an Englishman. Someone suggested an indoor/outdoor thermometer. I bought
one, and it was a big success. He has mentioned it many times. After I
had
wrapped it, I realized that we use Fahrenheit and they use Centigrade.
After Christmas I mentioned that in an email, saying I hoped he knew a
good
way of converting. He responded that, not only is there a button on the
thermometer to switch back and forth, but he grew up with Fahrenheit and
is
more comfortable with that.

Anyway, thanks to whoever made the suggestion.


It was me and I'm so glad they liked it.
I also grew up with fahrenheit as a child. I know how hot 80f is. Hot!
I'm in some sort of zone where I can sort of understand both F & C. I like
to have upper temperatures told to me in fahrenheit. I can't quite
visualise how warm, or not, is 12C.
However I can visualise easily how cold is -1C, just a film of ice on the
chicken drinkers. -5C-7C I have to chip out the ice with a screwdriver and
my fingers stick to anything metal like bolts and gates.

Tweed

Christina Websell wrote:

It was me and I'm so glad they liked it.
I also grew up with fahrenheit as a child. I know how hot 80f is. Hot!
I'm in some sort of zone where I can sort of understand both F & C. I like
to have upper temperatures told to me in fahrenheit. I can't quite
visualise how warm, or not, is 12C.
However I can visualise easily how cold is -1C, just a film of ice on the
chicken drinkers. -5C-7C I have to chip out the ice with a screwdriver and
my fingers stick to anything metal like bolts and gates.

Isn't that weird - I am exactly the same. Cold temps from about 10 deg C
downwards and hot from 60 deg F upwards. Grew up with both, being a
child of the 70s-80s :-)

Deb.

--
http://www.scientific-art.com

"He looked a fierce and quarrelsome cat, but claw he never would;
He only bit the ones he loved, because they tasted good." S. Greenfield

I don't "do" centigrade, or metres or kilograms for that matter, I'm a
strictly pre-decimal girl, apart from money that is! I have to change
the settings on the computer at work back into inches if I'm not at my
own desk and when I get weighed at the docs I have to ask him to
translate, I'm useless!

Marcia

On 2006-01-11, Christina Websell penned:



It was me and I'm so glad they liked it. I also grew up with
fahrenheit as a child. I know how hot 80f is. Hot! I'm in some
sort of zone where I can sort of understand both F & C. I like to
have upper temperatures told to me in fahrenheit. I can't quite
visualise how warm, or not, is 12C. However I can visualise easily
how cold is -1C, just a film of ice on the chicken drinkers.
-5C-7C I have to chip out the ice with a screwdriver and my fingers
stick to anything metal like bolts and gates.


I'm definitely confused by Celcius, but I don't think 80F is hot! I
grew up in the Washington, DC area, where summer temps are routinely 95+F
(and feel even hotter with the intense humidity), and here in the
front range of Colorado, 90+F summer highs are also pretty normal.

On a day with an 80F high, I still might wear a long sleeve shirt.

--
monique, who spoils Oscar unmercifully

pictures: http://www.bounceswoosh.org/rpca

Christina Websell wrote:

I also grew up with fahrenheit as a child. I know how hot 80f is. Hot!
I'm in some sort of zone where I can sort of understand both F & C.

Is this an age thing? That is, is it mostly older people in the UK who
grew up using the Fahrenheit scale, who are still more comfortable with
it? Someone else mentioned that she's more comfortable with inches than
centimeters, too. I imagine that younger people who grew up after you
adopted metric units would be more comfy with those. When was the change?
In the 70s? That's when the US tried to make the same change, which, as
you know, failed.

The only metric units I have a visceral sense of are meters (I know
they're slightly more than a standard yard, at 39 inches), and kilometers
(about 6/10 of a mile). I did a 10km walk to raise money for AIDS research
and care, etc., a few years ago, and it was about 6 miles. Because I
actually walked that walk, I have a good sense of what 10km feels like.

And I remember in the 70s, walking to work on summer mornings (in Boston,
Mass), and having the digital temp read 18C. This was at about 8 AM, so
it was still cool and comfortable. So I can relate to the concept of 18C
without having to convert first. (But if you said it was, say 9C, I would
have to convert to know what that really means, because I don't have an
automatic association with that.)

Joyce

wrote in message
oups.com...
I don't "do" centigrade, or metres or kilograms for that matter, I'm a
strictly pre-decimal girl, apart from money that is! I have to change
the settings on the computer at work back into inches if I'm not at my
own desk and when I get weighed at the docs I have to ask him to
translate, I'm useless!

Marcia

When I was in high school, my chemistry teacher told us that the metric
system was the only sensible one, and that we'd be switched to it within 10
years. That was over 50 years ago, and although a few signs show distances
or speeds in both kilometers and miles, we are nowhere near being on the
metric system.

I was taught an easy way to translate Centigrade into Fahrenheit in my head
on my first visit from England. Double the Centigrade reading, subtract 10%
and add 32. It works. It isn't really complicated if you just think of it
one step at a time. I'm not so good at translating the other direction,
though. I know a meter is a little over 3 yards (about 39 inches) and a
kilometer is 5/8 of a mile, so I can sort of manage those. However, weights
have me completely flummoxed. I know about stones, but tell me what you (or
I) weigh in kilograms and I haven't the foggiest idea what that means.

Joy

"Christina Websell" wrote in message
...

"Yoj" wrote in message
news
A couple of months ago I posted, asking for suggestions for a gift to
send
an Englishman. Someone suggested an indoor/outdoor thermometer. I
bought
one, and it was a big success. He has mentioned it many times. After I
had
wrapped it, I realized that we use Fahrenheit and they use Centigrade.
After Christmas I mentioned that in an email, saying I hoped he knew a
good
way of converting. He responded that, not only is there a button on the
thermometer to switch back and forth, but he grew up with Fahrenheit and
is
more comfortable with that.

Anyway, thanks to whoever made the suggestion.


It was me and I'm so glad they liked it.
I also grew up with fahrenheit as a child. I know how hot 80f is. Hot!
I'm in some sort of zone where I can sort of understand both F & C. I
like
to have upper temperatures told to me in fahrenheit. I can't quite
visualise how warm, or not, is 12C.
However I can visualise easily how cold is -1C, just a film of ice on the
chicken drinkers. -5C-7C I have to chip out the ice with a screwdriver
and
my fingers stick to anything metal like bolts and gates.

Tweed

Obviously you live in a cool climate, if you think of 80F as hot. In
Southern California, it's warm enough to be slightly uncomfortable, but not
warm enough to be considered hot. In Alaska, where my mother lives, 75F if
hot.

Joy

Monique Y. Mudama wrote:
On 2006-01-11, Christina Websell penned:



It was me and I'm so glad they liked it. I also grew up with
fahrenheit as a child. I know how hot 80f is. Hot! I'm in some
sort of zone where I can sort of understand both F & C. I like to
have upper temperatures told to me in fahrenheit. I can't quite
visualise how warm, or not, is 12C. However I can visualise easily
how cold is -1C, just a film of ice on the chicken drinkers.
-5C-7C I have to chip out the ice with a screwdriver and my fingers
stick to anything metal like bolts and gates.


I'm definitely confused by Celcius, but I don't think 80F is hot! I
grew up in the Washington, DC area, where summer temps are routinely
95+F (and feel even hotter with the intense humidity), and here in the
front range of Colorado, 90+F summer highs are also pretty normal.

On a day with an 80F high, I still might wear a long sleeve shirt.

I was going to say the same thing. I don't know Fahrenheit, but using
Julie's handy dandy xmas card insert, I see that it's 26C. That's not
hot! At all! I would be wearing jeans and a t-shirt. 35C is normal
here, that's 95F. That's hot.
Speaking of metric vs. imperial, I'm metric all the way except for
weights, I have to have in lbs and people's heights too. Strange,
because I grew up in Germany until I was 10, but then in Canada after
that. I guess I just got used to having people say they weigh 130 lbs
and are 5 foot 6 tall or whatever!
--
Britta
"There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast." -- Unknown
Check out pictures of Vino at:
http://photos.yahoo.com/badwilson click on the Vino album

Monique Y. Mudama wrote:

I'm definitely confused by Celcius

But it's so simple and logical! O C is the temperature at which water
freezes, at 100 C water boils. Normal human temperature is around 36.5.

--
Marina, Miranda and Caliban. In loving memory of Frank and Nikki.
marina (dot) kurten (at) iki (dot) fi
Stories and pics at http://koti.welho.com/mkurten/
Pics at http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/frankiennikki/
and http://community.webshots.com/user/frankiennikki