Why is the Fahrenheit scale set at 32 degrees for freezing and 212 degrees for boiling?

Answer 1

As the zero point on his scale Fahrenheit chose the temperature of a bath of ice melting in a solution of common salt, a standard 18th century way of getting a low temperature in the laboratory (and in the kitchen, as in an old-fashioned ice cream churn). He set 32 degrees as the temperature of ice melting in water. For a consistent, reproducible high point he chose the temperature of the blood of a healthy person (his wife), which he measured in the armpit and called 96 degrees. (The number arises from beginning with a scale of 12 intervals, like a one-foot ruler, and then doubling the number of steps as instruments become more precise, making 24 intervals, then 48, and finally 96.)1 Fahrenheit's successors used the boiling point of water to calibrate their thermometers, which they set at 212 degrees in order to retain the size of Fahrenheit's degree. Gabriel Daniel FAHRENHEIT was a German who was born in Danzig (today Gdansk, Poland) in 1686.He was interested in physical experiments, especially in measuring temperature. So after some experiments in his hometown (where winters were very severe) he designated a temperature scale and determined the temperature of his mixture of snow and salt at zero degrees. The freezing point of water was found on his scale at 32 (!)degrees. Another fixed point on his new thermometer scale was the body temperature of a healthy adult. Later on that was exchanged for the temperature of boiling water. On his scale that was 212 ° (!). To honor this outstanding physicist the complete system of degrees was called after him "the Fahrenheit system", (e.g. -11 F),and the system is still in use in the U S after it had been in use in Germany and other European countries. But not for a long time: In 1742 another physicist in Sweden,Anders CELSIUS, changed that system into a one-hundred-degree- system, calling the lowest temperature of frozen water "zero degrees"( 0°) and that of boiling water (212°F) "one hundred degrees" (100°). Many countries,among them the US, call these temperature degrees "centigrades", which is a logical thing to do when you look at the metric system used in many other countries. Only in 1948 it was decided to honor the Swedish physicists by using his name, too. But this C for Celsius is being left out more and more in Europe. ( It is pure coincidence that the C can be used used both for Celsius and centigrade. ) By the way, Europeans have a complicated calculating to do when they want to find out what their friend in the USA means by saying or mailing: "We had only a temperature of 0°F. Imagine that!" So Europeans take out their pocket calculator,remember the formula and start: To convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius/centigrade : F -32 x 5/9= C

Subtract 32 from the Fahrenheit degrees, multiply by 5, divide the product by 9. So ... 0° F -32 = -32......x5= - 160.../ 9 = - 17,77 ° C !

Time to put on the warm clothes! And don't forget the thermos bottle over there in Bismarck, N.D.!,when you leave the house!"

This was the story of Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit,the young man from Danzig/Gdansk, Europe, by the Baltic Sea, who was the father of the US system of measuring temperatures.