I just came back from Europe, where, like almost everywhere else in the world, temperature is measured in degrees Celcius. The U.S. and its territories still use Fahrenheit, a distinction shared only with the Bahamas, Belize, the Cayman Islands and Palau.
I hadn’t really appreciated the superiority of Celcius until I had the pleasure this past week of using a European shower that lets you press a button to increase or decrease the temperature in incrments of one degreee Celcius. In such situations you really come to appreciate the difference.
The shower starts off at 38oC, a fine temperature that many will enjoy. After clicking up to 41oC, I found my perfect shower. But here’s the thing: Every increment feels unique and useful. A 40oC shower feels clearly distinct from a 39oC shower, and so forth.
In Fahrenheits the quantum is too small. I don’t think I would be able to tell the difference between, say a 102
After this experience, I am sold on the superiority of Celcius. Now if we could just get the U.S. to switch from the English system to the Metric system. In the U.K. they converted decades ago, and over there in London they actually are English.
I think you just figured out how to get the US to switch. Don’t call it the “imperial”. Call it the “English” system. Everyone will be chomping at the bit to change.
Actually “Imperial system” wouldn’t have been as accurate. The measurement system Americans currently use is based on English units of measurement (abandoned by the U.K. in 1824). English units have a lot in common with modern Imperial units, but are not quite the same.
While traveling in Europe, I came to the opposite conclusion: whole degrees in Celsius are too large. The thermostats in the hotel rooms all incremented or decremented by half a degree for each button press. (At home, we sometimes battle over two degrees Fahrenheit and end up compromising by choosing the value in the middle.)
I also find the “decades” used in Fahrenheit to be a useful way to describe the general whether: “It’ll be in the 70s today” seems more useful than “It’ll range from 21 to 26 today.”
It is highly likely that you can engage a US plumber to make modifications to a Celsius shower gauge.
I have never taken a shower in the US that actually allows for a digital change in temperature, only analog – turn the lever this way or that without specifying a particular increment. Clearly I’m staying in the wrong hotels.