Today someone sent me a “ha-ha funny” list of illogical sayings. One of them was:

If the temperature is zero outside today and it’s going to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold will it be?

And I thought, “That’s not really such a bad question, just an ambiguous question.”

Here was my reply:

This is an ambiguous question because the answer depends on your reference point. I will assume for a moment the question references degrees Fahrenheit since we’re in North America and not Canadian.

0 F = -17.7 C

So twice as cold would be -17.7 C * 2 = -35.4 C. Convert back to Fahrenheit and you get -31.7 F.

So twice a cold a zero degrees Fahrenheit is -31.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

If however we started with Celsius it’s a bit trickier. A better way to make the statement is, “half the temperature on the Kelvin scale.” which, by this definition, “twice as cold as 0 C” is half of 273.15 K.

Follow me so far? One half of 273.15 K is 136.57 K. Convert it back to Celsius and we get -136.58 C. If you want to know how cold that is (_very_ cold) in Fahrenheit we convert again and get -230 F.

If we were to start a 0 degrees Kelvin we would be in serious trouble because that’s “Absolute Zero” and the temperature which atomic movement ceases and matter just sort of falls apart. In theory it can’t be twice as cold as that because that’s as cold as it gets! How cold is absolute zero? It’s -460 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s so unimaginably cold you can’t…well you can’t even imagine how cold it is! Let’s just say, don’t lick a metal pole when it’s -460 degrees Fahrenheit out because the pole, and you, will cease to exist!

Trivia:
Wacky but true; Celsius and Fahrenheit are calibrated such that -40 Celsius equals -40 Fahrenheit

Formulas used:
Celsius to Fahrenheit formula: F = (C * 1.8) + 32
Fahrenheit to Celsius formula: C = (F - 32) * 0.5555
Celsius to Kelvin formula: K = C + 273.15
Kelvin to Celsius formula: C = K - 273.15