Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
was the reverse of the scale now known by the name "Celsius": 0
represented the boiling point of water, while 100 represented the freezing
point of water. In his paper Observations of two persistent degrees on a
thermometer, he recounted his experiments showing that the melting point of
ice is essentially unaffected by pressure.Celsius, also known as centigrade is
a scale and unit of measurement for temperature. It is named after the
Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (17011744), who developed a similar
temperature scale. The degree Celsius (C) can refer to a specific
temperature on the Celsius scale as well as a unit to indicate a temperature
interval, a difference between two temperatures or an uncertainty. The unit
was known until 1948 as "centigrade" from the Latin centum translated as
100 and gradus translated as "steps"Throughout the world, except in the
United States, Belize, Palau and the United States territories of Puerto
Rico, Guam and the US Virgin Islands the Celsius temperature scale is
used for practically all purposes.[citation needed] The only exceptions are
some specialist fields (e.g. low-temperature physics, astrophysics, light
temperature in photography) where the closely related Kelvin scale dominates
instead.Most of the entire scientific field and many engineering fields use the
Celsius scale, and the metric system in general. However, most Americans
remain more accustomed to the Fahrenheit scale, which is the scale that US
broadcasters and journalists use in weather forecasting, although the
equivalent in Celsius is sometimes provided alongside.