That’s because human perception exists on a logarithmic scale! It’s called the Weber-Fechner law, and it was one of the first studied psychological phenomena, before psychology as a field was even defined.
Interestingly, our sense of the “bigness” of numbers is also logarithmic. This is why there have to be explicit explanations of the massive difference between a million and a billion - our brains instinctively and erroneously think “eh, it’s like double.”
~edit I can’t type~
What the fuck is Fahrenheit.
It’s a weird pseudo-scientific scale based on feelings, a bit like horoscopes. I don’t know why they still use it.
As a Swede I can attest to that the biggest difference is when approaching 0°C or around 0°. It’s due to the air humidity. There’s still a bit humidity in the air around 0° but when that’s gone you don’t feel too big of a difference after that.
From what I remember from physics course, transitioning between solid/liquid/gas states requires extra energy to be absorbed or released that isn’t contributing to change in temperature. So change from -1°C ice to +1°C water is actually taking more energy than from 10°C to 12°C, despite being the same difference in temperature.
Also, we perceive temperature not in terms of these absolute values anyway, but rather how quickly it transfers heat to or from our body. That’s why humidity affects it, as moist air absorbs heat faster than dry (air being a pretty good heat insulator in general).
Once it’s below -5 it’s just cold. The range 10° above that has the possibility of being a damp cold and that sucks the life out of you
Yeah exactly
I can always tell when it’s about 0 because I can feel a frosty tingle when I breathe in through my nose.
Hard to describe, but I’m sure you know what I mean.
I highly disagree. 5 and touching a metal doorhandle ungloved is painful. 15 degrees is relatively safe if your not doing something stupid but 5 you have to be bundled up well. My bet is it feels the same to you because you bundle up well when going out into 5. Also the wind chill gets much worse the lower you go. I think also there is a big effect as you approach freezing. I tend to hate 35 degree weather vs 25 because of rain vs snow. 35 degree rain is some of the worst weather to me because you can’t simply bundle up for it.
if its 45C thats hot.
Parts of the US can reach 100 during the summer
That sounded weird so I had to look this up. The hottest recorded temperature America is 134.4°F (56.7°C), which was measured in Death Valley, California, on July 10, 1913.
I think you could be mixing up °C and °F.
It is a joke about Celsius vs Fahrenheit
Just don’t try visiting a place that is 100 Kelvin
Sorry, that went way over my head. 🤦♂️
5 and 15 don’t feel the same to me
I don’t know what 15 degrees Fahrenheit feels like. Or 5. Or 35. Or 45.
Trust I’m right then friend.
Never trust an American.
💋
15 f is pretty chilly. 35 f is cold if it was warm yesterday, but warm if it was cold yesterday, 45 is the same. 5 f is really cold if it’s humid or windy, but tolerable otherwise.
-15f is where your teeth start to hurt if you open your mouth outside.
If we convert to civilized units, -15f is -26c. Ah, so not that cold at all lol
In normal grades, 10 degrees in the autumn means winter is almost upon us, but 10 degrees at spring is t-shirt weather. And 20 degrees through the night means it’s impossible to sleep because you’re drowning in sweat. Probably very Norwegian issues, though.
Man I wish it eas 20°C at night where I am
I never wish for that, but seeing a positive number wouldn’t hurt these days.
But after experiencing 15 or 5 for a few weeks 35 feels almost like spring. A few weeks ago I was half frozen at 35 with 2 jackets on, yesterday it was in the mid-30s and I took off my one jacket and was just in short sleeves because I was starting to get sweaty.
Your body adjusts to temperature changes.
When you experience the first cold day, your body panics and acts like you’re going to freeze to death. After a few days pass and you don’t freeze to death, your body realizes it overreacted and adjusts accordingly.
It’s just a Nervous Nellie.
Yup. All winter, we have been whinging about single and teen digits and wanting summer to come around. Then we get blasted with 44C. We weren’t careful what we wished for… But on the positive side, the rest of the summer will be a breeze. 😎
Absolutely true.
It starts to make sense when we account for our body’s reactions.
The human body must work much harder at some of these temperatures, than at others.
Closing a 3 degree gap between ambient and ideal temperature has a very different physical cost than trying to adjust to a 30 degree gap.
And at some certain point, the body’s natural defenses start to run out of options (closing pores, adjusting heart rate, adjusting breathing, increasing or reducing sweat or activity level). Once the body applies every available defense technique, then each extra degree (now with no further defense to apply) may become dramatically more harmful.
This is also why wind chill matters. The actual amount of heat being lost by a body is much more relevant to safety than simply measuring the ambient temperature.
As a Mainer anything under like 5° C feels the same to me. The only difference is how much your snot freezes.
According to radio weather reports in Canada -5° usually “feels like” about -20 according to the elaborate calculations of the wind chill experts, so that checks out.
Yeah wind chill is a whole separate can of shitty worms.
