Temperature

[sandmaster]

If the forecaster says tomorrow will be twice as cold as today, and today it reached minus 1c I assume tomorrow it will be -2c.
But what if today it reached 0c? What will be the reading tomorrow?

[Rollo]

"Tomorrow will be twice as cold as today" is meaningless.

[sandmaster]

Exactly. But many questions are. So what is the meaningless answer?

[Rollo]

The meaningless answer is whatever you want it to be I suppose.

[R1Geezer]

do not try and attach meaning to what is a figure of speech. We use them all the time. what is "cold" for a start I mean it's 273K anyway and that is positivley tropical in universal terms so cold means negative hot so ................. get out more!

Some one said the other day " I turned around and said...." well obviously you had your back the them to start with and that's rude! see what I mean, no rhymme or reason just drivel.

[Quizmonster]

If you click here, you will find your question has appeared on AnswerBank five times before. Perhaps you can find out more by clicking on each heading there.

[sandmaster]

Sorry if it was a repeat. It is a question on my desk calendar - I just hoped it would start a debate of some sort!!

[mibn2cweus]

sandmaster, If you don't quite playing around on that computer and get back to work right now you will know precisely what "twice as cold" means when you try coming back to work tomorrow. Is that clear enough for you?

The Boss!

[factor-fiction]

Comparives such as 'twice a much as' or 'half as much as' depend on there being a proper measurement scale where zero is definitely zero.

With measures such as mass or distance there is a clear value for zero. For temperature, however, the centigrade scale is an artificial scale where zero was set at the temperature at which water freezes and 100 is the temperature at which water boils.

For temperature the true scale is degrees Kelvin where 0 degrees K is said to be absolute zero. On this scale 0 degrees C is 273 degrees Kelvin.
So absolute zero is -273 degrees C.

So, assuming 0 degrees K or -273 degrees C is definitely the lowest the temperature can possible be, I suggest we can argue that if it was 0 degrees C today then next day it fell to half that temperature it would fall to -136.5 degrees C.

I'm not a scientist but i remember this from school. But I'm happy to be corrected by science specialists.

[wildwood]

I don't want to bamboozle you with a load of scientific jargon but obviously the correct answer is 00�

Hope this helps :-)

[zig.zag]

thermals

[zig.zag]

if were going to be scientfic
have you ever seen as much moon as tonight?
hardly supportive is it?

[zig.zag]

its simple indeed

[Ice.Maiden]

No, it was tonight knobby - if you're still sounting this early morning as night time. Erm......

[mibn2cweus]

I know! I know! How about . . .
. . . twice again as cold tomorrow as today was compared to yesterday? ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ <o/"\o>

[factor-fiction]

I hope we have established that 0�C is not twice as cold as 0�C!
Another wrong answer no-one has given is to say that twice as cold as 0�C is -9�C. The argument is that 0�C on the Fahrenheit scale equates to 32�F. So twice as cold would be 16�F. This converts to 9�C.
Nonsense of course- it just confirms that temperature in degrees f or C is measured on arbitary scales (in that there is no true zero), unless we use the Kelvin scale and accept that absolute zero is -273�C

[sandmaster]

What I don't get is why anyone would want to give a serious answer to this drivel!!

[mibn2cweus]

"What I don't get is why anyone would want to give a serious answer to this drivel!!"

At last, a question I can sink my teeth into.

The reason we expose fallacies is so that we do not have to live with and endure their consequences, suffering in silence their parasitic existence as with a festering sore on our backside. So let's put this one to rest, shall we?

To begin with we should cast aside the misleading and blatantly absurd assumption that -2c is irrevocably twice as cold as -1c. What any of this has to do with the velocity of light is a topic that can only be discussed meaningfully by those well versed in the nuances of relativity theory.

In light of most of the discussion that has taken place so far in this thread (taking my own in particular into consideration) it should be blatantly clear to all but the most hardened skeptic that bringing this question to a meaningful resolution within this forum is about as likely as getting a reliable forecast for tomorrow's weather . . . imho!

Nevertheless, those who have lent their keen insight into the problems inherent in the question framed by this thread should not go without some recognition in the form of worthy praise and so to them I resound with a hearty, "Here here!"

[Ice.Maiden]

I quite liked your answer mib - but WHY is it absurd to assume that -2's double that of -1???? I'm sure what you say's correct, but could you explain in simple language for me? If the temperature was -1 today, and tomorrow's temperature was expected to be double that....I would've been tempted to expect it to reach -2 then.
Obviously not..... : (