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Author Topic: Change temperature to Celsius  (Read 61819 times)

Random832

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #135 on: March 25, 2009, 04:29:32 pm »

for example in the US a billion is 1000 million but in UK it is a million million.

No actually in all english speaking countries a billion is 1000 million. The UK hasn't used it to mean a million million since 1974.
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praguepride

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #136 on: March 25, 2009, 06:35:29 pm »

I never knew they did that anyway...

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ToonyMan

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #137 on: March 25, 2009, 06:39:48 pm »

Ex-act-ly!
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Mikademus

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #138 on: March 25, 2009, 07:34:40 pm »

I think that all scientists should us SI, I mean look at the mars lander that crashed, that cost more than $100,000,000, I also think that copuntries should get the words for numbers sorted out, for example in the US a billion is 1000 million but in UK it is a million million.

Well, ignoring the... ehrm... well, most of it, actually, I tend to use "milliard" instead of "billion". It is more correct and avoids potential misunderstanding (especially with Scandinavian languages) anyway, though any statement like that will attract the hounds.
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katana0182

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #139 on: March 25, 2009, 08:21:13 pm »

Now if you want a universal, non-anthropocentric temperature scale, suitable to creatures whose planet has ammonia or methane in the place of liquid, solid, or gaseous water, you can use electron-volts.

But for us Earthlings, we should change it to Kelvin, because you get to use uints. Set up conversion based on locale (K - 273 for celsius, I don't know for fahrenheit), overridable in the inits. Default to Fahrenheit for US, Burma, and Liberia. Default to Celsius for other Earthlings.
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LegoLord

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #140 on: March 25, 2009, 08:30:28 pm »

I'm sure others feel the same way about people suggesting it's "disgusting" to point out that there's no inherent advantage to one arbitrary system over another arbitrary system.
Allow me to restate:  Celsius is not arbitrary.  It is based on the melting and boiling points of water, one of the most important substances to human existence; it has a great influence on weather, we are largely composed of it, we cook with it, we play all kinds of sports on it, we fight with it, we use it in manufacturing . . . the list goes on.

And to whoever complained about how Toady is behind on this game and doesn't need to waste time on this . . .

This is a suggestion thread!  That is not the point of the discussion!  And if Toady thinks he can squeeze it in sometime before DF is done, he can do that if he wants!  If not, we wait 'till it's closer to done.  When it's implemented is really not the issue here. That's how this whole suggestion system works.  Now:

Kelvin x10:  No reason for that.  DF has no display, so that would just give modders a slightly less unusual number to work with.  Same for any other new scale.  Being able to accept multiple scales would be solution to the OP's problem, which, despite this being the internet, we should be trying to work out.  If you have a better solution, say it.  If you see a problem with multiple scales, say it.  Don't just say "i vote for x system because y" because that'll leave someone else needing to translate all their numbers.  An init option would be absurd, as that could make using mods difficult.
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SirHoneyBadger

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #141 on: March 25, 2009, 08:32:42 pm »

Well, Kelvin x1 would also suit me.
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ToonyMan

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #142 on: March 25, 2009, 09:06:19 pm »

-5 Kelvin is my favorite temperature.
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Draco18s

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #143 on: March 25, 2009, 11:31:20 pm »

I think that all scientists should us SI, I mean look at the mars lander that crashed, that cost more than $100,000,000, I also think that copuntries should get the words for numbers sorted out, for example in the US a billion is 1000 million but in UK it is a million million.

Just like to point out that that kind of mistake has happened more than once.  The last time it happened a guy noticed the mistake about 48 hours before the Hubble telescope went up and had it's mirror reground.  He got a bonus for it.

Allow me to restate:  Celsius is not arbitrary.  It is based on the melting and boiling points of water, one of the most important substances to human existence; it has a great influence on weather, we are largely composed of it, we cook with it, we play all kinds of sports on it, we fight with it, we use it in manufacturing . . . the list goes on.

Celsius is based on the freezing and boiling points of water at 1 atmosphere of pressure.  Once you leave sea level (or worse, leave Earth entirely) the system is meaningless.  On a planet slightly lighter than Earth (say, Mars) water freezes at around 0C, but boils away at 10C (depending on region, some places on Mars are extremely close to the Triple Point: 6.11 millibars).  That's not useful at all!
« Last Edit: March 25, 2009, 11:39:02 pm by Draco18s »
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eerr

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #144 on: March 26, 2009, 02:43:13 am »

why are we talking kelvin, celsius, and farenheight?
have you guys forgotten?
THIS IS DF!
we measure tempratures in DF by
normal, Body Temp, MAGMA, DEADLY HEAT and DEADLY WINTER.

in an ideal scale, those all fall on units of somethin 00

any other implementation of temprature is completely arbitrary
to DF, and will require translation.
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SirHoneyBadger

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #145 on: March 26, 2009, 03:40:53 am »

Well, one cool thing about celsius is that it was invented by Anders Celsius, who came from Uppsala, Sweden, the heart of the Norse world. Celsius was also an astronomer, and came from a family of astronomers, who were probably all Viking navigators for like a thousand years before that.

That's a lot more "dwarfy" than some guy from Danzig.
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RAM

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #146 on: March 26, 2009, 07:16:09 am »

For instance, my dwarfs have 6 fingers on each hand (2 of the fingers are thumbs), so they use a base 12 numerical system.

Shouldn't they use base 6, for redundancy?

I prefer million million, numbers in use seem to be getting larger, and an exponential scale is slightly more robust in that regard, once you start dealing with tetrawads and gigloads you will be wishing you hadn't insisted upon all those neat little clumps of 3, but scientific notation will probably kick in before then...

I think the point of Kelvin x 10 is to allow finer temperature distinction without resorting to floaters...

I am starting to suspect that Toady would spend more time reading this thread than Toady would spend scripting a new input and conversion code. Assuming that Toady will read this. Toady is probably more likely to waste Toady's time Reading this Toady thread if it mentions Toady alot, unless Toady ignores Toady threads that have Toady written Toady alot Toady Toady Toady...
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Random832

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #147 on: March 26, 2009, 08:35:37 am »

Allow me to restate:  Celsius is not arbitrary.  It is based on the melting and boiling points of water

Right - the melting point at 0 degrees and the boiling point at 99.974 degrees - how could I be so silly as to forget?

Fahrenheit was originally based on the melting point of water (fixed to 32) and the average human body temperature (fixed to 96 - exactly 64 [26] degrees above 32).

Now they're both based on an arbitrary fraction of the triple point of water (1/273.16 and 1/491.688) and an arbitrary zero point (in Celsius's case, .01K below that triple point, for Fahrenheit, -32.018°R below it) chosen more to match past flawed measurements than the actual properties of water.

---

Anyway - there are three separate components to this thread:

The internal representation - right now, this is a scale where one unit = 1°R (~0.56 K) and absolute zero is fixed at 9508.33. This could change, or it could stay the same. Changing it would break saves, but bear in mind he is in the middle of a save-breaking revision right now.

The raws - the solution most people here seem to support is allowing a variety of units. A bare number (10067) would indicate the old scale, or the temperature could be given as 99F, 37.2C, or 310.3K

And the last is temperature display - right now all we see is "It is cold", "It is freezing", but why not allow, for example, "It feels like mid-50s" with init set to give it in fahrenheit, or "It feels like about 12 degrees"* (for a temperature of 10030 and a wind-chill factor of ~7F/4C).

Or even allow thermometers to be built (require a unit of mercury [easily extracted from cinnabar] and a glass tube?) to monitor the temperature at a specific point on the map.

*How do you say imprecise temperatures in speech in celsius? With your larger degree, [upper/lower/mid]-[decade]s seems like it would be _too_ vague, and an exact degree is too exact
« Last Edit: March 26, 2009, 08:40:03 am by Random832 »
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RAM

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #148 on: March 26, 2009, 10:05:53 am »

I am not quite entirely certain that I support multiple scales, having to put in a letter before every temperature could get irritating, and forgetting to add one could cause nasty bugs in mods...

Increased complexity = increased stuff-ups...
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Random832

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Re: Change temperature to Celsius
« Reply #149 on: March 26, 2009, 11:36:59 am »

I am not quite entirely certain that I support multiple scales, having to put in a letter before every temperature could get irritating, and forgetting to add one could cause nasty bugs in mods...

Increased complexity = increased stuff-ups...

I've got a rudimentary raw parser class (working on an autoconverter from the current raws to the new ones) for .NET, I could write a validator that could check things like this
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