• grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        25·
        7 months ago

        But seriously though, who the Hell has ever used Rankine? The SI system of measurement is older than the discovery of absolute zero, so there was never a reason for that bastard unit of measurement to exist in the first place, except to be a contrarian asshole.

        • Successful_Try543@feddit.de
          2·
          7 months ago

          Maybe over there, they use it to give temperature differences a proper unit. Where we use Kelvin, they probably use degree Rankine.

          • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
            8·
            7 months ago

            Over where? Here in the US, where I am? Even as an American I think that shit is ridiculous.

            • Successful_Try543@feddit.de
              2·
              7 months ago

              It’s just a guess. My thermodynamics lecturer at least became furious when somebody used °C instead of K for expressing temperature differences.

              • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
                3·
                7 months ago

                A thermodynamics lecturer in the US would want people to use K (not °R!) too.

                  • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    3·
                    7 months ago

                    Nope, a lot of consumer/general-public stuff is in freedom units (we buy milk in gallons but soda in liters, for example), but science is all metric and engineering is mostly metric (the exception is civil engineering).

                    Speaking of which, that’s not as different from the rest of the world as you might think: ever wonder why 13mm is a suspiciously common size for things like bolt heads and plywood thicknesses? It’s because they’re secretly 1/2"!