Fahrenheit is a Temperature is the physical property of a system which underlies the common notions of hot and cold; the material with the higher temperature is said to be hotter. ...temperature scale named after the The Federal Republic of Germany ( German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland) is one of the worlds leading industrialised countries, located in the heart of Europe. ...German The word physicist should not be confused with physician, which means medical doctor. ...physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, also called Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit (May 24, 1686 _ September 16, 1736), was a physicist and an engineer, who most of his life worked in Netherlands and for whom the Fahrenheit scale of temperature is named. ...Gabriel Fahrenheit ( Events The League of Augsburg is founded. ...1686– Events January 26 _ Stanislaus I of Poland abdicates his throne. ...1736), who proposed it in Events January 14 _ King Philip V of Spain abdicates the throne February 20 _ The premiere of Italian opera by George Frideric Handel, takes place in London June 23 _ Treaty of Constantinople signed. ...1724.

In this scale, the The melting point of a solid is the temperature at which it changes state from solid to liquid. ...freezing point of Drinking water This article focuses on water as we experience it every day. ...water is To help compare different orders of magnitude this page lists temperatures between 100 kelvins and 1000 kelvins. ...32 degrees (this is written "32 °F"), and the boiling point is 212 degrees Fahrenheit, placing the boiling and melting points of water 180 degrees apart. Thus the The word unit means any of several things: One, the first natural number. ...unit of this scale, a degree Fahrenheit, is 5/9ths of a The kelvin (symbol: K) is the SI unit of temperature, and is one of the seven SI base units. ...kelvin (or of a degree The degree Celsius (°C) is a unit of temperature named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–1744), who first proposed it in 1742. ...Celsius), and minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit is equal to minus 40 degrees Celsius.

History

There are several competing versions of the story of how Fahrenheit came to devise his temperature scale. One holds that Fahrenheit established the zero of his scale (0 °F) as the temperature at which an equal mixture of Icicles A natural ice block in Iceland Ice is the solid form of water. ...ice and Sodium chloride, also known as common salt, table salt, or halite, is a chemical compound with formula NaCl. ...salt melts (some say he took that fixed mixture of ice and salt that produced the lowest temperature); and ninety_six degrees as the temperature of blood (he initially used horse's blood to calibrate his scale). Initially, his scale had only contained 12 equal subdivisions, but then later he subdivided each division into 8 equal degrees ending up with 96. He then observed that plain water would freeze at 32 degrees and boil at 212 degrees.

Another well_known version of the story, as described in the popular physics television series The Mechanical Universe, holds that Fahrenheit simply adopted Ole Rømer. ...Rømer's scale, at which water freezes at 7.5 degrees, and multiplied each value by 4 in order to eliminate the fractions and increase the granularity of the scale (giving 30 and 240 degrees). He then re_calibrated his scale between the freezing point of water and normal human body temperature (which he took to be 96 degrees); the freezing point of water was adjusted to 32 degrees so that 64 intervals would separate the two, allowing him to mark degree lines on his instruments by simply bisecting the interval six times (since 64 is 2 to the sixth power).

His measurements were not entirely accurate, though; by his original scale, the actual freezing and boiling points would have been noticeably different from 32 °F and 212 °F. Some time after his death, it was decided to recalibrate the scale with 32 °F and 212 °F as the exact freezing and boiling points of plain water. This resulted in the healthy human body temperature being 98.6 °F rather than 96 °F.

The Fahrenheit scale was widely used in many English_speaking countries until the The degree Celsius (°C) is a unit of temperature named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–1744), who first proposed it in 1742. ...Celsius (formerly centigrade) scale was adopted in the late Centuries: 19th century _ 20th century _ 21st century Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s _ 1960s _ 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s Years: 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 Events and trends The 1960s was a turbulent decade of change around the world. ...1960s and 1970s _ Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ...1970s. In the The United States of America — also referred to as the United States, the U.S.A., the U.S., America¹, the States, or (archaically) Columbia — is a federal republic of 50 states located primarily in central North America (with the exception of two states: Alaska and Hawaii). ...United States and Jamaica is a country in the Caribbean Sea, located south of Cuba and to the west of Hispaniola, on which Haiti and the Dominican Republic are situated. ...Jamaica, the Fahrenheit system continues to be used by the general population for everyday, non_scientific temperature measurement; despite its murky origins, it remains well_suited for this use as temperature in temperate latitudes tends to range from around 0 °F to 100 °F. Conversion between the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales is given by the formula T_C = 5/9 · (T_F − 32), where T_C and T_F are the Celsius and Fahrenheit temperatures, respectively.

Curiosities

Paper burns at 451°F (232.78°C). This is why the title of the book by Ray Bradbury is "Fahrenheit 451".

External links

• Alternate story at The Straight Dope (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a891215.html)