In the novel ‘history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson’ he tickled my curiousity by telling about the Fahrenheit scale! He says he does not know why Fahrenheit chose such a crazy scale where freezing point is 32 and water boils at 212!
Of course we Indians use the SI unit and the celcius scale so we have no trouble since for us ice is zero and water boils at 100! Simple and practical!
But still it did make me wonder while driving on why 32 and 212! Luckily driving on the streets of Kuwait is a breeze so you can wonder while you drive!
Anyway the story is not so simple (like my blogs, they rarely are!)
Apparently Fahrenheit did not choose the numbers, the numbers chose him! Oldest story in the book!
So it was found that those exact numbers are a mathematical result of how he originally calibrated his scale and how later scientists adjusted it!
In fact like any sane person he did start with zero and almost hundred but the reference points were not the same!
Fahrenheit based his initial thermometer scale on two different reference points:
He set 0°F as the lowest temperature he could reliably reproduce in his laboratory using a cooling mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride (a type of salt)!
He set his second point at approximately the temperature of the human body (or inside a healthy person’s mouth).
For this he chose 96 because the number could be easily divided in half repeatedly (96→48→24→12→6→3), which made marking physical tick marks on glass thermometer tubes practical!
So the lowest point is zero and human body temp is 96! Which made the 32 and 212 happen!
When Fahrenheit placed his thermometer in pure ice and water, it consistently measured 32 degrees!
Then practically when he tested boiling water, it measured around 212 degrees!
Later of scientists wanted a cleaner, more standardized system!
They redefined the scale using water’s physical phase changes—fixing the freezing point of water cleanly at 32°F and the boiling point at 212°F.
This left an interval of exactly 180 degrees between freezing and boiling, which also slightly shifted the original body temperature measurement closer to what we know today as 98.6°F!
Again later comes Celsius with his more practical scale which we all use now! But even that has an interesting story! Now do not reach boling point in Celsius or Fahrenheit! You will learn about it some day!
That’s a big Golmaal! Which reminds me of our OG director Hrishi da aka Hrishikesh Mukherjee!
Now hope that either fahrenheit or celcius; the Earth does not heat up much and sleep!
Shub ratri!
