DIYbanter - View Single Post - Thermometers: What's the Problem with Accuracy?

dpb[_3_]

On 2/4/2018 1:52 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 4 Feb 2018 17:54:48 +0000, Bod wrote:
....

As an aside, I'm surprised that the US is still using Fahrenheit instead
of the universal Centigrade.
....

We use what we are used to. OTOH Fahrenheit gives you about twice the
precision without resorting to decimals. I am comfortable with both
since my science friends are all C

Precisely...since US doesn't have the culture that guv'mint can enforce
stuff like this universally on the general public, popular usage remains
(similar as to having kept almost exclusively other US/Imperial measures
as well).

I'm a nuclear engineer by BS, MS Physics (Nuclear Science) and spent
over 30 year in the traces and still, while I'm capable of thinking
through roughly what C corresponds to F and vice versa, it's still only
just native F that really resonates; it's just the system that is ingrained.

While in the reactor design world, all the nuclear calculations were in
conventional metric units (scaled for the purpose, for example, nuclear
absorption cross sections are in "barns", a barn being 10E-24 cm^2) but
all the thermo guys were in English units so we consistently used core
inlet/outlet temperatures of 555/605F and had (and still remember many)
values of the steam tables such as that Tsat at 2200 psia is 649.45 F
(although those are like 1977 Table values; they've been updated so
probably a hundredth or few off currently-published numbers).

I'm sure in the now almost 40 years since last actually worked inside a
reactor vendor (spent last 20+ yr consulting for various utilities and
US DOE rather than with vendor) the design protocol will have all moved
to metric just for the consistency. We began the process even while I
was still at the vendor when teaming with German and French partners;
their licensing authorities at the time required it although it never
changed our practices in the US.

The argument has raged forever and while there are valid reasons for
metric in business and industry and inside those fields things have gone
almost universally that way, there's just no overpowering reason that
familiar units must change so the status quo remains and new generations
continue to be reared with no practical day-to-day acquaintance with
them so they also are only innately comfortable with F for temp and the
cycle continues...

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