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Comment by bmitc | Hacker News Reader

Do people actually directly measure boiling water? I've never seen that. It's a self-apparent phenomenon. I've never heard of anyone measuring anything while cooking where it matters which temperature scale they're using.

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It is really useful for calibration. Stick a thermometer in there and you can tell how accurate it is.

Unless you live at altitude 0, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.

Celsius and Fahrenheit don’t make much difference. That’s the only part of the imperial system which is not incredibly inferior to metric.

Calibration of what? The thermometer? When do you need to calibrate a thermometer at the temperature of boiling water and how does the temperature scale affect that in any way?

The fact that calibration points at sea level of celsius are very easy to produce. Just need some ice and then some boiling water. And I can't even get my hands on pure ammonium chloride. Just some mixed stuff.

Yes, calibration of the thermometer. For example with sous vide cooking, it can be useful to know how accurate your equipment is since recipes are often expressed in precise temperatures.

Thanks for the example, but I'm still not sure what that has to do with the scale since you only care about a single number in that case.

I need to look up sous vide cooking. I've never heard of it before. Seems pretty interesting.

You need at least two points to determine the slope of the thermometer, 0 and 100 as freezing and boiling point of water makes that reproducible.

well the boiling point depends on the elevation (pressure), so that tells you nothing at all.

The metric system is based mostly on water. 1 kg = 1 litre = 1000 cm3

For people serious about their tea, measuring 70, 80 or 90 Celsius is vital.

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