Comments on: 30% Hotter

By: Ξ

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:19:01 +0000

I like your post. I think of the difference in more quantitative terms, as if they were proportion. If a sound is a 60 on scale of 0-100 [not necessary sound intensity, this is more abstract than that] then half as loud would be a 30 [halve the 60] but twice as quiet would be a 20 [double the remaining 40 and then take the remainder out of 100]. But I don’t know what practical significance that has. None, I suspect.

What I forgot to add in this post is that when I *first* read the 30% hotter, what I envisioned was relative to some ambient temperature like 68°F, where you don’t have to wear a coat but don’t feel warm either. Then the body’s temperature would be just over 30°F warmer than that, so the extra 30% would account for only about 9 or 10°F. But this would put it as less than 110°F, which would make for a leisurely swim across the lake so I discounted it right away even though it made the most internal sense to me.

By: Chris Wellons

Chris Wellons — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:25:13 +0000

Freshwater shouldn’t be able to exist at a temperature of 266 degrees F in a normal atmosphere like that. It would stop at about 212 degrees F (or lower since they are probably above sea level) and just boil. That’s why double boilers are useful.

By: Barry Leiba

Barry Leiba — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:03:01 +0000

Nice. I'd have started with Fahrenheit, assuming that it's an American author. But, really, it's sloppy writing: why not just say, "The water was 130 degrees Fahrenheit, thanks to the geothermal heat under the lake’s bed."? No one would really have any immediate sense of what that "30% hotter" thing means, so communication wasn't did. (Also, I think I'd say "poached", rather than "boiled", at that temperature.) This reminded me of the post I did about a year ago, on "half as loud" vs "twice as quiet".