Celsius and Fahrenheit

Do you know what weather is in America? No? Let’s listen to the radio to learn. We are going to listen to the weather in one of the biggest city in America – New York.

The New York city forecast here on this Tuesday: a rumble thunder, mid-60s tonight. Tomorrow scattered showers, likely breeze in cool 67.

Wow, temperature is mid-60s? and 67 degrees? How is it possible? I don’t know.

Let’s listen to something else, take a San Francisco’s weather forecast.

Tuesday brings a beautiful weather for Golden Gate Bridge. 69 degrees at Fisherman’s Wharf. 63 at Half Moon Bay, we are in the mid-70s in San Francisco suburbs for this afternoon high 75 at Fairfield, 73 at Livermore and 71 degrees in center there, in Silicon Valley.

69 degrees, 63 degrees, 70s—75 degrees, 73 degrees, 71 degrees… what’s that? Who can tell me?

I’m going to look up in internet. Let’s ask Google about it. Aha... I’ll show you what I have learnt.

The problem is that people in America use Fahrenheit scale to measure temperature, and in Russia we use Celsius scale.

Anyway, it's helpful to be able to convert between Celsius and Fahrenheit if you go to some other countries of the world...Well, OK, it's not really a lot of countries that still use Fahrenheit scale.

Look at the map. Actually, it is widely used only in the United States of America, in Liberia (it’s an African country) and Myanmar (or it is used to be known as Burma); it’s a country in Southeast Asia bordered by Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand, and some small states and islands, such as: the Bahamas, Belize, the Cayman Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico; they are all situated near the Unites States, right here, and also American Samoa and Palau.

You could, of course, install an application on your phone that would do the conversion for you, but where's the fun in that?!

In science, the Celsius scale is used more often than the Fahrenheit scale.

The Celsius scale is divided into 100 equal parts, called degrees Celsius.

In Fahrenheit thermometer lower fixed point is determined as 32 F and upper fixed point as 212 F. There are 180 degrees between the two fixed points. These points are highest and lowest because they determine the freezing point and boiling point of water. The scales got their names thanks to the scientists – Anders Celsius and Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, they both made their scales in the 18th century.

Let’s look at degrees on these scales to establish the correspondence between them. The freezing point of water is 0 degrees Celsius and 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius and 212 Fahrenheit.

Our everyday room temperature is about 18 degrees by Celsius in Russia and it’ll be about 65 degrees in America, body temperature of 37 degrees is equal to 98,6.

And the highest temperatures on our planet are 58 by Celsius and 136 by Fahrenheit.

Would you like to know where they are?

Let’s look at the hottest places of our planet. The first one is in Libya, and the second one is in America.

So, scales differ a lot. But converting between temperatures on the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales is easy. If we take the Celsius degrees and divide them into 100, it will equal to Fahrenheit degrees dividing into 180, but subtract 32, because it is starting point of the scale. Then we do some mathematical calculations. Celsius will be 32 subtract from Fahrenheit, divide into 180 and centuple, it means we should multiply by 100. Then we cancel 100 and 180 into 9 and 5, and the final formula is Fahrenheit subtract 32 and divide into 1.8. And if we want to covert Celsius into Fahrenheit, we should multiply Celsius degrees by 1.8 and then add 32. Look at the scheme.

Ok, imagine that you woke up today in Atlanta, state Georgia, in the USA; and all the news outlets were talking only in Fahrenheit temperatures. Their forecast for the whole upcoming weekend, Friday through Sunday, is for a high temperature of 60-80°F.

From the weather channel here in Atlanta area forecast… Is that really hot? Is it going to be a gorgeous weekend? Should you buy ice? To answer all these questions we should try to convert temperatures ourselves. So, 50 degrees are equal to … 10 degrees by Celsius, 60 degrees are the same to 15,6 in Russia, 70 degrees are … 21,1 in our country, and 80 degrees are 26,7 degrees in our thermometers.

Hey, it’s up to 25 today, so dress accordingly.

Thanks for warning me.

That’s 25 degrees by Celsius, not Fahrenheit.