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Temperature Scales

The most familiar temperature scale to most people in the US today is the Fahrenheit scale, abbreviated F. In this scale, water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees (at sea level). Above sea level water boils at a lower temperature.

The scientific community often uses Celsius or Centigrade temperature scale. In this scale, water freezes at 0 degrees and boils at 100 degrees.

To convert between Fahrenheit and Centigrade:

Fahrenheit Temperature = (Celsius Temperature) x (9/5) + 32

The theoretical science community also uses the Kelvin scale where zero is considered to be something called absolute zero that occurs at -273.15 Celsius, or -459.67 Fahrenheit. The Kelvin scale uses degrees that are equal to the Centigrade scale. Absolute zero is the theoretically lowest possible temperature. Science has yet to ever achieve absolute zero, and in theory never will.

A scale that uses Fahrenheit degrees but considers zero to be absolute zero is called the Rankin temperature scale.

We know that hot air rises and cold air sinks. This happens even though the air at the top of the room and the air at the bottom may be identical in every other way.  Why? Because when gasses are cooled they become more dense. Things that are more dense are heavier than things that are less dense.

Theoretically, if you cooled a gas enough it would reach a point where it was so dense that volume would be zero. That is how the concept of absolute zero was discovered. It is not possible to cool something so far that it’s volume would become a negative number – it can only become zero. Thus there is an absolute zero temperature.

As a practical matter gasses become so dense that they turn into liquids before absolute zero is reached - like propane or liquid oxygen which are liquids when compressed but become gasses when they are not compressed.

Other links to pertinent articles: Temperature Scales and Absolute Zero

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