Converting Fahrenheit to Celsius (and vice versa) is not a mathematically taxing enterprise. Stop someone on the street with this task and you'll likely get a jumble of "Well ya multiply by nine-fifths or five-ninths or sumptin and den ya add thirty-two, no wait, ya subtract 32s ands thens yas multiplies by — oh hell, I don't know kid, get a thummomeda, will ya?" That only works if you speak the language, and even then not very well.
When I was in Beijing last summer, the thermometers told me the temp in °C, which is not incredibly helpful if you don't have a reasonable amount of empirical experience to relate temperatures in Celsius with how the weather feels. So I spent the better part of a class called World Trade and World Intellectual Property Law: Institutions & Policy, taught by Bill Hennessey, figuring out a quicker way to convert these unintuitive °C to my white bread apple pie °F.
In a certain set of standard atmospheric or environmental conditions, pure water freezes when the temperature reads 32°F or 0°C. The Celsius scale is based on this temperature at which liquid water changes to a solid phase. So we know that Fahrenheit relates to Celsius in that way. How else do they coincide?
Well, with a dual read thermometer, or a few quick calculations, you can come up with a few benchmark temperatures in each scale which will aid in the task of on-the-fly mental conversion. Turns out, every change of 10 degrees in Celsius marks a change of 18°F (hence the five-ninths and nine-fifths jibber-jabber). So:
10°C = 50°F.
20°C = 68°F
30°C = 86°F
40°C = 104°F
-10°C = 14°F
-20°C = -4°F
-30°C = -22°F
I've only ever had a feverish temperature up to 104, and rarely did the Rockford winters get much lower than 22 below, ignoring wind chill. I hope you'll forgive me if my benchmarks stop there; you can extrapolate further if you find yourself in Death Valley with nothing but Centigrade.
By a quick deduction, these benchmarks will get you within 9°F of your temperature, and you can either guesstimate from there, or for an exact temperature, remember that 1°C is 1.8°F, and 2°C is 3.6°F.
Test run: (yawn) Fracking alarm! What time is it? What's the weather like? 36 degrees?!?! But it's summer… Oh, right, Celsius. So 40 is 104, so 35 is 95, and 36 is 95+1.8 = 96.8°F. Simple.
If I was you, I wouldn't care. But the bequest has been beheathed. Now, a manatee.
© State of Florida 1999-2008
How about that Hadron Collider? Let's all keep our fingers crossed for a day or two.
MSNBC's take.
The blinking zeros here (down the page a little) supposedly indicate that the world ended and we missed it.
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