Temperature Conversions for Dummies (Metric System 6)

Here at the Antisocial Network we absolutely love the sight of another self-appointed freelancer trying to collect more of those all-holy dollars by providing misinformation on a topic the average sixth-grader could handle with aplomb. Take, for instance, the thousands – if not millions – of badly-written, misguided, and just plain wrong articles about the metric system: just about any middle-schooler who's been paying attention in class (we know, we know: a small sample size) has a better handle on the topic than these greedy adults. Today's example comes from the depths of Suite.io (formerly Suite101.com) where James Hutchinson made a mess of "Celsius to Fahrenheit Temperature Conversion."¹

Oh, heck, even the most addle-brained fifth-grade student knows that there are simple formulas for going back and forth between the two temperature scales. Hutchinson, however, decided that someone somewhere needed another conversion version a few hundred words long. It's too bad that he also decided to include a little ambiguity and a collection of downright errors... errors like these:

"[The Fahrenheit and Celsius] scales are linear, that is, the degree points are divided evenly; there is the same difference in temperature between each point on the scale" Ummm, that is at best ambiguous and more likely just wrong: it reads as though conversion between the two scales is a simple matter of addition and subtraction, which as we all know isn't the case -- otherwise, no one would bother writing all those freelance articles. More from Hutchinson: "A Celsius degree is larger than a Fahrenheit degree. It is exactly 9/5 greater..." Scientifically and/or grammatically incorrect, James: a Celsius degree isn't "9/5 greater," it's 9/5 of a Fahrenheit degree. If it were 9/5 greater, each °C would equal 3.8 (3 and 4/5) °F. Learn English, dude! To convert °F to °C, James tells us (incorrectly, we might add) to: "The formula works similarly in for converting back to Celsius. Subtract 32 from the Fahrenheit reading and divide by 5/9. Make sure to subtract 32 before dividing, or you will end up with the wrong result."

Oops: "divide by 5/9"? You'd have flunked fifth-grade math with that statement, James, because doing that is the same as multiplying by 9/5, which you already said is the conversion from °C to °F – not the same as multiplying by 5/9, the correct step. What, you people don't proofread this crap before hitting "PUBLISH"? or even after hitting "PUBLISH"?

Sorry, James: you screwed the pooch with your misstatements and your out-and-out errors. That means you're the winner of today's booby prize, the Dumbass of the Day award.

¹ This website is now defunct, and the post wasn't archived by the Wayback machine. Oh, well, no loss...  

copyright © 2016-2021 scmrak

MM - METRIC SYSTEM