Temperature

One of the most confusing things for me when I moved to Euroland was getting used to the metric system.  It really makes no sense to me that the USA is the only industrialised country in the world that has not adopted the metric system.

With my parents coming to Europe in a couple of days I know that metric will mess with them.  So here's how to deal with temperature.

To convert Celcius to Fahrenheit you divide C by 5, then multiply it by 9 and add 32.

To convert Fahrenheit to Celcius you subtract 32 from F, divide by 9 and multiply by 5.

While these formulas work, I never use them.  I figured it was just better to learn Celcius then always bother with having to convert temperature.  I knew that 0°C (32°F) was freezing and 100°C (212°F) was boiling.  And as a reference point, 28°C = 82°F.  Plus there's always the poem that goes...

30 is hot, 20 is nice, 10 is cold, 0 is ice.

Metric temperature just makes more logical sense.  For example, normal human body temperature is 37°C.  Why is it 98.6°F?  37 is way easier than 98.6.

While I now have a handle on metric, I do have one crutch still.  Every year at Thanksgiving, I make a cheat sheet for the oven because all of my holiday food recipes are written in Fahrenheit.

325°F = 162°C

350°F = 176°C

375°F = 190°C

400°F = 204°C

425°F = 218°C

450°F = 232°C

475°F = 246°C

500°F = 260°C