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ELLE_AW
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Why does Celsius degrees have +/- signs, since it's scalar?
How would you recommend temperatures below zero Celsius be indicated?ELLE_AW said:Why does Celsius degrees have +/- signs, since it's scalar?
Thank you so much for the distinction. That makes perfect sense.Dale said:Scalars can be negative. You are thinking of a magnitude which is strictly non-negative. Temperature is not a magnitude.
The Celcius scale (also the Fahrenheit scale) uses values that relate to arbitrary points on an absolute temperature scale. That scale starts at Zero K so all temperature values are actually 'in the same direction'.ELLE_AW said:Why does Celsius degrees have +/- signs, since it's scalar?
Dale said:Scalars can be negative. You are thinking of a magnitude which is strictly non-negative. Temperature is not a magnitude.
sophiecentaur said:The Celcius scale (also the Fahrenheit scale) uses values that relate to arbitrary points on an absolute temperature scale. That scale starts at Zero K so all temperature values are actually 'in the same direction'.
ELLE_AW said:Yea, the Kelvin scale makes more intuitive sense to me, but yea the arbitrary nature of that zero point makes sense too, as representing another temperature scale. Thank you!
boneh3ad said:The scale for Celsius was chosen so that 0 was the freezing point and 100 the boiling point of water
boneh3ad said:It's not really arbitrary, though. The scale for Celsius was chosen so that 0 was the freezing point and 100 the boiling point of water, two commonly-occurring phenomena in everyday life. ...
gmax137 said:Yes, but in the big picture it is arbitrary -- we could be doing our labs on the planet Zork, where atmospheric pressure is different.
Where I live, water boils at 204F. Oops, I mean 95.6 Celsius.
You mean 0° used to be the boiling point of water, and 100° was the freezing point? Well then I’m glad it got changed; that’s just confusing.Vanadium 50 said:Originally, the reverse. It was changed by Linnaeus (yes, that Linnaeus) after Celsius' death.
If the Celsius scale is "arbitrary", then so is the Kelvin scale. The difference of 1K is still based on boiling and freezing of water.boneh3ad said:It's not really arbitrary, though. The scale for Celsius was chosen so that 0 was the freezing point and 100 the boiling point of water, two commonly-occurring phenomena in everyday life.
Jeff Root said:It has a specific and logical reason, but it is arbitrary.
Lots of other values could have been used for equally
specific and logical reasons.
-- Jeff, in Minneapolis
Except for arbitrary definitions of "arbitrary".boneh3ad said:So... not arbitrary.
The +/- signs in Celsius temperature indicate whether the temperature is above or below the freezing point of water, which is 0 degrees Celsius. A positive sign (+) indicates that the temperature is above 0 degrees, while a negative sign (-) indicates that the temperature is below 0 degrees.
Yes, Celsius temperature is a scalar quantity because it only has magnitude (numerical value) and no direction. It is simply a measure of how hot or cold something is, without any indication of the direction in which the temperature is changing.
Celsius temperature is considered a scalar quantity because it does not have a direction associated with it. Unlike vector quantities, such as velocity or force, which have both magnitude and direction, temperature only has magnitude and is therefore classified as a scalar quantity.
Yes, Celsius temperature can have a negative value. As mentioned earlier, a negative value indicates that the temperature is below the freezing point of water. This is often the case in colder climates or during winter months.
The Celsius scale was originally defined based on the freezing and boiling points of water, with 0 degrees Celsius being the freezing point and 100 degrees Celsius being the boiling point. This made it a convenient scale for measuring everyday temperatures, and the use of degrees has continued even as the scale has been redefined using more precise measurements.