Viewing post #1574728 by DebbieC

extranjera said:It does help with temperature to just forget the old way and start forming new ideas about how hot or cold certain degrees are in centigrade. The formula for converting them is only probably useful to a maths genius, I could not do it in my head. First of all it changes as you go up and down the scale, if 'Multiply by 9, then divide by 5, then add 32' seems a reasonable exercise for daily living - you are more mathematically inclined than I am. I can't even remember addresses that are all number streets.

I know that I am comfortable from 25°c to 30°c and that over 35°c feels hot and under 20°c has me shivering. So, that's all I need. My oven is in Centigrade but then so are many of my recipes. I bought a kitchen scale because all the recipes down here give amounts by weight not cups. I find it messier but then Europeans tell me they hate using US recipes because they seem so inexact.

And -40 C is -40F! Know that one too well unfortunately!
I still convert a lot of things despite having lived with the metric system for a lot of years. In the garden if a plant is 30 cm, I think, ahh, 12 in and so on.
When I buy an item by weight, it is always converted in my head to lbs. Had to use the metric system during my working years as I was in the medical field, but struggled with some of those measurements in everyday life.
In Canada, it still is mostly a "hybrid" of the two systems, except for the very young who only learn metric.