Celsius

Today the temperature is about 15 degrees. That is if you believe in Celsius. I was brought up in Fahrenheit, so if I add 32 and then multiply 15 by 9 and divide it by 5, and add the two numbers up, I get 59 degrees Fahrenheit. 59 seems warmer than 15. It made me wonder what other things could be improved by a change of the units of measurement, a simple example is my age, if I am 83 Fahrenheit years old I would be only 60 Celsius, that seems a lot younger. Of course it would not work so well if you were really young. A Fahrenheit 15 year old would be -9 Celsius which is rather an improbable age.

Using the well known principle of reductio ad absurdum, one could apply this technique to many other conversions. The obvious one is the difference between distance signs here in Canada and in the United States, when what is presented as a metric 100 here would only be 62 in the US. This of course means that Canadian cars will go from zero to 60 much faster. Applying this conversion to my age I would be fifty one and a half in the states, even younger than Celsius.

I will only go so far in these comparisons, I have just realised that my metric weight is 82,555 grams which is a terrifying thought,