Question

JTL

JTL

Active member
if it is zero degrees out and it is twice as cold the next day, what temperature is it the next day?
 
There is not enough information given. Twice as cold? what the fuck does that mean? Cold is an adjective. If it was forty degrees today and it was twice as cold tomorrow would it be 20 degrees? or would it be -40. I dont think that makes sense
 
We need to know what scale you are using haha. If it's fahrenheit then conversion is needed. If it's celcius then the next day it would be 273K times 2, which would be like 273 degrees and not possible haha.
 
i just saw it on facebook and i wanted to see if anyone heard it before and knew the answer
 
Dumb question. You need to establish a "0 level" or something, otherwise it's just an ambiguous question.
 
Well if 0 is your base then 20 degrees would be half as cold. The distance from 40 to 0 is once and then 0 to -40 is twice as cold.
 
It has to be something like this. In the Celsius scale, like people already said, it makes no sense to say "twice as cold" because there is no zero level. Kelvins give you absolute zero, where (theoretically) all molecular motion stops, so you can kind-of compare things like this.

In reality though, it does depend a lot on perception and such, so it's not a great scientific question.
 
Alright i guess i didnt word it right but i am studying for my statistical analysis test right now and the reason one can not say "twice as cold" is because temperature is INTERVAL data. quote from the book, "if the low temperature for the day was 40F and the high was 80F, can we say that the temperature was twice as hot(represents twice the heat) as the low temperature? NO. If we convert those temps to Celsius, the low was 4.4C and the high was 26.6C, a much different ratio. thus we cannot compare the absolute magnitude of interval scales."

One could argue that by converting the data into K units an absolute zero is present (the absence of heat) this transforms the data into RATIO data. Then such conclusions maybe drawn.

sorry ive been studying way too long and this reminded me of my earlier comments
 
temperature isnt a ratio scale so we can't measure in ratios. but if we could measure the speed at which the particles are moving that gives us the temperature we could figure it out.
 
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