Dear Dr. Staff:
I was reading a newspaper, and it said that global warming may
increase the temperature by 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the next thirty years.
I wanted to see how that would affect temperatures in other countries,
but all I had for Europe were in degrees Celsius. I converted
the change, and was surprised to discover that +3.5 degrees Fahrenheit is
equal to -15.8 degrees Celsius. Does this mean that the temperature
goes up 3.5 degrees in Fahrenheit and down sixteen degrees in
Celsius? How can this be?
Dear Confused:
What you've discovered is the difference between a conversion
formula and a conversion factor. To convert from one unit
distance to another, such as from feet to
inches, you use a factor--such as 12. For every foot you have, you have
twelve inches. (Since most people have two feet, they also have 24
inches, but that's another matter.) But temperature doesn't work that
way. The formula to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit is much more
complicated, involving an advanced mathematical concept referred to
as multi-term computation, which is too complex to get into
now. If you look at a map, you'll see that Great Britain is about as
far north as Minnesota. Yet, you probably know that winters given to
England are not anything like the icy monstrosities the season
dumps upon Minnesota. England has only been as warm as it is now since
the nineteenth
century, when it switched from Fahrenheit to Celsius. It did this to
promote global
warming--water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, but 0 degrees Celsius,
so when the temperature is between 0 and 32, water is frozen in Fahrenheit,
but liquid in Celsius. So England, which uses Celsius, doesn't get nearly
as much snow as Minnesota, which uses Fahrenheit. But the global climate does not turn on a dime. The global warming
you hear so much about these days
is the continued warming of the earth from the leftover momentum caused by
countries changing to Celsius to make their winters less severe. The United States and Jamaica are the only countries left in the world
to use Fahrenheit, because if a country as big as the United States were to
change now, global warming would get much worse and Jamaica works so
much with the United States that they use the same system we do. (Together,
these two countries make up what's called the thermocouple, but that's
another topic too complex to get into.) While converting to Celsius would
result in a better climate for all Americans, the US will probably
wait to switch to Celsius until the global climate has adjusted to the
warming left over from the conversion of the rest of the world to Celsius.
--Thermal Wizard--Confused by Temperatures
