A bunch of reasons, the foremost being that I just like it.
My "official" reasons are: that it means never having to do conversions before making calculations using the gas law (PV=nRT); that it has psychological benefits because "270" sounds so much warmer than "-3" or "28"; and that it avoids errors in thinking that describe 90F as "twice as hot" as 45F.
"Unofficial" reasons -- that is, not my stock answers that I use as excuses to inflict the Kelvin scale on people -- include the fact that I just like the idea of having one temperature scale to use whether I'm doing science or talking about the weather. And since I live in a place where the weather does go below freezing, using an absolute scale means never having to check for a minus-sign. (And since I prefer mks units for science/engineering, Kelvin makes more sense than Rankine -- though if I wanted to simply be obscure and unique and a PITA, Rankine is less well known than Kelvin.) And that it amuses me to a) educate people by reminding them about science, b) watch the "Huh?" reactions from some people, and more importantly, c) watch the "Oh yeah, cute -- I remember that" smiles from folks who recognize what I'm talking about right away.
And -- this is a bigger reason than I usually admit to ...
... Since I grew up using Fahrenheit for everything and was in school during the abortive attempt to convert the US to metric, I like the metric system both for science and because it means not having to do conversions when conversing with people in countries that use it, but I don't get that constant reinforcement to get me properly accustomed to thinking in the metric system for everyday stuff. For Celsius, I can cheat by constantly looking at a thermometer with both scales on it, so that I'm just doing a table lookup all the time and really thinking of temperature in Fahrenheit. By constantly saying temperatures in Kelvins -- to myself, as well as aloud and in print -- I reinforce the mapping of "it feels like this" to "this number" more effectively than if I use a scale where opportunities to be lazy about it are abundant. Personal brain-wiring quirk and a workaround for it.
So, with time and practice and lots of conversion artithmetic, I'm slowly building up a mapping of "my fingers feel this cold and are moving slowly, it must be in the mid 280s; I'm perspiring indoors and it feels stuffy, but the same temperature is comfortable outdoors, it must be about 300; a slight breeze feels like a knife, it must be below 260" similar to the established-in-childhood and (constantly reinforced by every weather report on the radio or television and most bank signs) for the good old F scale.
If I lived in Canada, I'd be used to C by now. I don't. Once I've got the K mappings, the fact that converting K to C is a simple subtraction will make using C as natural as F is now.
(no subject)
My "official" reasons are: that it means never having to do conversions before making calculations using the gas law (PV=nRT); that it has psychological benefits because "270" sounds so much warmer than "-3" or "28"; and that it avoids errors in thinking that describe 90F as "twice as hot" as 45F.
"Unofficial" reasons -- that is, not my stock answers that I use as excuses to inflict the Kelvin scale on people -- include the fact that I just like the idea of having one temperature scale to use whether I'm doing science or talking about the weather. And since I live in a place where the weather does go below freezing, using an absolute scale means never having to check for a minus-sign. (And since I prefer mks units for science/engineering, Kelvin makes more sense than Rankine -- though if I wanted to simply be obscure and unique and a PITA, Rankine is less well known than Kelvin.) And that it amuses me to a) educate people by reminding them about science, b) watch the "Huh?" reactions from some people, and more importantly, c) watch the "Oh yeah, cute -- I remember that" smiles from folks who recognize what I'm talking about right away.
And -- this is a bigger reason than I usually admit to ...
... Since I grew up using Fahrenheit for everything and was in school during the abortive attempt to convert the US to metric, I like the metric system both for science and because it means not having to do conversions when conversing with people in countries that use it, but I don't get that constant reinforcement to get me properly accustomed to thinking in the metric system for everyday stuff. For Celsius, I can cheat by constantly looking at a thermometer with both scales on it, so that I'm just doing a table lookup all the time and really thinking of temperature in Fahrenheit. By constantly saying temperatures in Kelvins -- to myself, as well as aloud and in print -- I reinforce the mapping of "it feels like this" to "this number" more effectively than if I use a scale where opportunities to be lazy about it are abundant. Personal brain-wiring quirk and a workaround for it.
So, with time and practice and lots of conversion artithmetic, I'm slowly building up a mapping of "my fingers feel this cold and are moving slowly, it must be in the mid 280s; I'm perspiring indoors and it feels stuffy, but the same temperature is comfortable outdoors, it must be about 300; a slight breeze feels like a knife, it must be below 260" similar to the established-in-childhood and (constantly reinforced by every weather report on the radio or television and most bank signs) for the good old F scale.
If I lived in Canada, I'd be used to C by now. I don't. Once I've got the K mappings, the fact that converting K to C is a simple subtraction will make using C as natural as F is now.
(no subject)
Somehow, those were about the reasons I thought.
(no subject)