this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2026
664 points (98.4% liked)
Lemmy Shitpost
42403 readers
3453 users here now
Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.
Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!
Rules:
1. Be Respectful
Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.
Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.
...
2. No Illegal Content
Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.
That means:
-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals
-No CSA content or Revenge Porn
-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)
...
3. No Spam
Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.
-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.
-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.
-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers
-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.
...
4. No Porn/Explicit
Content
-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.
-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.
...
5. No Enciting Harassment,
Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts
-Do not Brigade other Communities
-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.
-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.
-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.
...
6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.
-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.
...
If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.
Also check out:
Partnered Communities:
1.Memes
10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)
Reach out to
All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah, but in one the math is super easy and you don't need to throw in 6 conversion factors.
Okay, then, how much energy does it take to boil 1mL of water from room temperature? (Note that I said "boil," not raise it to 100°C.)
We will assume that room temperature is 20° C. The heat of enthalpy is 2257 kJ/kg, or 2.257 kJ/g. As stated previously, the amount of energy to raise water 1 degree is 1 cal, which also equals 4.184 J. So,
(100-20) × 4.184 + 2257 =
80 × 4.184 + 2257 =
334.72 + 2257 =
2592 J rounded to the nearest whole number. This will leave you with a dry pot.
Now show me the process using Fahrenheit, fluid ounces, and foot-pounds.
It's about 1 BTU per fluid ounce per degree Fahrenheit, so:
128 fl oz × (212 - 68)°F × 1BTU/fl oz•°F = 18,432 BTU
Add in the enthalpy of vaporization:
7.5 BTU/fl oz × 128 fl oz = 960 BTU
So, about 19,392 BTU.
I'm cooking pasta for dinner, and I didn't do any calculations. I just put the water in the pot on the stove, and waited for it to boil. Which was kind of the point of my question. Metric is all neat and elegant, but that's irrelevant in daily life, because if I did have to calculate the energy requirement, I'd have to look up the enthalpy value, because it's not memorable, as well as figuring in the actual atmospheric pressure to determine the actual boiling temperature. It makes all the sense in the world to use SI where it matters (e.g. science experiments), but customary units persist because in so much of daily life, it doesn't matter.
So your argument is we don't need this in everyday life. Sure, that's sort of true, but I guarantee this was necessary in making a stove that would work in your area. But also true is that if it doesn't matter that much in day-to-day life, then the only reason to keep such a clunky system is familiarity.
Also, 1 BTU is the amount of energy to raise the temperature of 1 pound of water 1 degree F. So your calculations are already off by a factor of 128. Given the world doesn't need you to know the numbers for water to boil, that doesn't affect much, but perhaps the vastly higher number for heating the water versus the amount of energy to get the water to vaporize should have clued you in that something was weird. It's easy to tell in metric because most of the dimensional conversion values are 1 or factors of 10.
There are people who like to dismiss the value of knowledge because it isn't important in their daily lives. This is only true if you live in a hut where the only sources of force are human, animal, or fire, or there is someone unseen that you rely on who has used those tools extensively to provide you a life where knowing that isnt necessary. Raising the bar with ridiculous conversion calculations every step of the way makes understanding these concepts more difficult for the layperson and makes the field harder to enter.