Thermometer quiz
January 29th, 2009 | 
Author: 
Here’s another quiz: I can’t call it counter-intuitive because it doesn’t have much to do with intuition. More with simple knowledge.
Read the four statements below. Only ONE is correct. Which one is it? Answer is in the first comment to this post.
a. Fahrenheit defined the human body temperature (his!) on his newly invented temperature scale as 100. This got later revised to 98.6 degrees.
b. Celsius invented a temperature scale where 0 degrees would indicate the temperature of boiling water, and 100 degrees that of melting ice.
c. ‘Absolute zero’ on Kelvin’s temperature scale equals -273 Celsius.
d. Nowadays the Réamur temperature scale is only used to measure the temperature of milk in the making of pizza dough.
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Okay, here’s the answer:
a. Fahrenheit defined the human body temperature (his!) on his newly invented temperature scale as 100. This got later revised to 98.6 degrees.
Nope. Fahrenheit’s body temperature was originally set at 96 degrees. Although it later DID get revised to 98.6.
c. ‘Absolute zero’ on Kelvin’s temperature scale equals -273 Celsius.
It’s what I learned in school. But -273.15 C is far more accurate.
d. Nowadays the Réamur temperature scale is only used to measure the temperature of milk in the making of pizza dough.
Uh, no! Nowadays the Réamur temperature scale is only used to measure the temperature of milk in the making of cheese.
So that leaves answer ‘b’ as the only correct one!
*sighs* GET.A.LIFE.
Note: We have been having LOTS of temperature problems. Errrr.. In the kitchen that is. My aunt’s fudge receipe flopped because I could not achieve the magic temp range of 234° F – 238° F for soft ball stage. Despite numerous thermometers, dismal, complete FAILURE. Chocolate SOUP. We’ve burned up 3 deep fryers. Don’t ask. Naan making was … well, not so much a success. Oh well.
Not to mention the multiple efforts at ‘oliebollen’ and our current deep fryer’s difficulty with something as mundane as fries!
Hmmm… If the question would have been “which answer is most OFF the mark?”, then indeed “b” would have been correct.
Water boiling at 0° Celcius? Ice melting at 100° C??
@Injun: You made my day!
Because I designed this quiz JUST so that I would get the response you just gave it! 😉
Maybe I SHOULD have filed this post under ‘counter intuitive’ after all!
*rubs hands*
Statement “b” IS the correct one!
Well, at least you didn’t fall for the trick with the picture of the ball of pizza dough!
It must be just me – I don’t get it. I was taught that 0 Celsius was the equivalent of 32 F, the temperature at which water freezes and 100 was the equivalent of 212 (I think) F, the temperature at which water boils.
SO I get the “ice melting” part…sort of. As for the rest of it, I’m baffled. But then again, that doesn’t take much.
Melissa: 0 C IS 32 F, and yes, it’s the temperature of freezing water, and 100 C that of boiling water (at sea level).
However, Celsius ORIGINALLY defined that just the other way around: 0 C for boiling water, and 100 C for freezing water. Now that we are USED to scales that go ‘higher’ for ‘warmer’ that may seem odd, but the ‘direction’ of the scale is of course arbitrary: Celsius simply chose that lower numbers indicated ‘warmer’ temperatures. Anything warmer than boiling water would be ‘below zero’.
What happened was, that when he had a technician construct an actual thermometer based on ‘his’ scale, the technician had those numbers backwards. Probably realizing that ‘direction’ doesn’t really matter, they left it at that, and now our Celsius scales point at 0 in freezing water and at 100 in boiling water. But that’s NOT how Celsius originaly designed it.
Good gods…
Thank you for the explanation, though – it makes much more sense! Not that I’m EVER going to need this information later in life, but I feel less like an idiot. 🙂
Thanks!