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To: KarlInOhio
Twice on which scale? The global average temperature is 58.1°F, 14.5°C or about 288 K. Which do you double? Would it be 116.2°F (average, $(#(#*( that is hot), 29°C (pretty hot, maybe Alaska would be nice), or 576 K (lead would probably melt in the daytime and refreeze at night). Kelvin is the only one of those scales in which you can really talk about doubling the temperature because its zero point is absolute zero.

Well, double is 100% hotter. How would you express temperatures 1% hotter than today's average? Are you saying that can't be expressed?

13 posted on 07/16/2008 11:58:41 AM PDT by decimon
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To: decimon
Well, double is 100% hotter. How would you express temperatures 1% hotter than today's average? Are you saying that can't be expressed?

Most physical quantities use a scale where zero means "none of what you are measuring", so any multiplication makes sense because saying something like "twice as long" would be the same physical length whether you used meters, inches, miles or cubits. Fahrenheit and Celsius don't start counting from a real zero point, therefore multiplication or percentage changes don't make any sense in them. You can only do that in a scale where zero means zero like in Kelvin. (or at least that's what I had beaten into me in a few physics and thermodynamics classes).

14 posted on 07/16/2008 12:06:57 PM PDT by KarlInOhio (Whale oil: the renewable biofuel for the 21st century.)
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