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Concept
Celsius
Summary
The degree Celsius is the unit of temperature on the Celsius scale (originally known as the centigrade scale outside Sweden), one of two temperature scales used in the International System of Units (SI), the other being the Kelvin scale. The degree Celsius (symbol: °C) can refer to a specific temperature on the Celsius scale or a unit to indicate a difference or range between two temperatures. It is named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–1744), who developed a variant of it in 1742. The unit was called centigrade in several languages (from the Latin centum, which means 100, and gradus, which means steps) for many years. In 1948, the International Committee for Weights and Measures renamed it to honor Celsius and also to remove confusion with the term for one hundredth of a gradian in some languages. Most countries use this scale; the other major scale, Fahrenheit, is still used in the United States, some island territories, and Liberia. The Kelvin scale is of use in the sciences, with representing absolute zero.
Since 1743, the Celsius scale has been based on 0 °C for the freezing point of water and 100 °C for the boiling point of water at 1 atm pressure. Prior to 1743 the values were reversed (i.e. the boiling point was 0 degrees and the freezing point was 100 degrees). The 1743 scale reversal was proposed by Jean-Pierre Christin.
By international agreement, between 1954 and 2019 the unit and the Celsius scale were defined by absolute zero and the triple point of water. After 2007, it was clarified that this definition referred to Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water (VSMOW), a precisely defined water standard. This definition also precisely related the Celsius scale to the scale of the kelvin, the SI base unit of thermodynamic temperature with symbol K. Absolute zero, the lowest temperature possible, is defined as being exactly 0 K and −273.15 °C. Until 19 May 2019, the temperature of the triple point of water was defined as exactly .
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Kelvin
The 'kelvin', symbol K, is a unit of measurement for temperature. The Kelvin scale is an absolute scale, which is defined such that 0 K is absolute zero and a change of thermodynamic temperature T by 1 kelvin corresponds to a change of thermal energy kT by 1.380649e−23J. The Boltzmann constant was exactly defined in the 2019 redefinition of the SI base units such that the triple point of water is 273.16K. The kelvin is the base unit of temperature in the International System of Units (SI), used alongside its prefixed forms.
Temperature measurement
Temperature measurement (also known as thermometry) describes the process of measuring a current local temperature for immediate or later evaluation. Datasets consisting of repeated standardized measurements can be used to assess temperature trends. Precision thermometryTemperatureTemperature scaleThermoscopeThermometer and Pyrometer Attempts at standardized temperature measurement prior to the 17th century were crude at best. For instance in 170 AD, physician Claudius Galenus mixed equal portions of ice and boiling water to create a "neutral" temperature standard.
Rankine scale
The Rankine scale (ˈræŋkɪn) is an absolute scale of thermodynamic temperature named after the University of Glasgow engineer and physicist Macquorn Rankine, who proposed it in 1859. Similar to the Kelvin scale, which was first proposed in 1848, zero on the Rankine scale is absolute zero, but a temperature difference of one Rankine degree (°R or °Ra) is defined as equal to one Fahrenheit degree, rather than the Celsius degree used on the Kelvin scale. In converting from kelvin to degrees Rankine, 1 K = 9/5 °R or 1 K = 1.