For distance and mass, zero means no distance and no mass.
For temperature though having none means no kinetic energy of atoms/molecules. It’s absolute zero, the zero Kelvin. So the other units are the weird ones.
But since zero Kelvin isn’t a phenomenon you’ll ever encounter in nature, it makes Kelvin a pretty unappealing scale for everyday life.
And thus we started making shit up…
When most of the temperature scales were made, they didn’t even know yet that there was a zero, I mean, theoretically, they likely knew or assumed. But they had no way of practically measuring it yet, at the very least.
I do think that as much as it would be weird for a couple of years, it would help a lot in the long run to widely adopt a temperature scale that starts at 0.
Because honestly, the percentage of adults I come across that have no idea how temperature works or what it even is conceptually beyond just “a nice day or a bad day” or “this is the number for cooking this thing” is astonishing.
Centimeters aren’t metric. On a construction site if you use CM and not millimeters they use machinery to give you a wedgie.
I think you’re confusing metric units with SI base units. Those are typcially the ones without any prefix (so a metre, not centimetre or milimetre). But all the prefixed versions are still metric.
Meanwhile second is the SI base unit of time, but it’s not metric.
Thanks for that tidbit, I just think there’s no reason to ever use centimeters. 1000mm = 1m, 1000m = 1km, 1000g = 1kg, 1000kg = 1T But centimeters aren’t timesable/divisable by 1000 to change units thus every construction site I’ve worked on has banned them to avoid confusion and I agree.
Unless you’re doing scientific research, absolute zero is pretty much useless, so…
As an engineer this is a comically incorrect take. Absolute zero is useful as an absolute reference in the same way zero of anything is. Try doing anything more complex than high school physics and the practical necessity for an absolute temperature reference becomes obvious. For fucks sake they even bothered to make an imperial version. Rankine is just Fahrenheit shifted to have zero be absolute.
Celsius, Kelvin and Fahrenheit are clear. I suppose one of the other ones is Rankine. What’s the last one?
Ohh, Rankine, thank you! I only remembered Rheamur - there you go. 😊
