Rankine Scale becomes standard in science

James Clerk Maxwell gets mad about widespread adoption of the Rankine scale, in light of Rankine's initial opposition to Maxwell's theories. They wage a war of words for a few months in leading publications, scientific and otherwise, and this becomes good material for a paragraph long blurb in one of those history-of-science popular books that you see from time to time. Also, one day, a NASA engineer or somebody forgets to convert Rankine to Fahrenheit or something like that and a space probe crashes into Mars instead of going into the intended orbit. Otherwise, I got nothin'.
 

Dorozhand

Banned
James Clerk Maxwell gets mad about widespread adoption of the Rankine scale, in light of Rankine's initial opposition to Maxwell's theories. They wage a war of words for a few months in leading publications, scientific and otherwise, and this becomes good material for a paragraph long blurb in one of those history-of-science popular books that you see from time to time. Also, one day, a NASA engineer or somebody forgets to convert Rankine to Fahrenheit or something like that and a space probe crashes into Mars instead of going into the intended orbit. Otherwise, I got nothin'.

Actually, the Rankine Scale is the Fahrenheit scale, except it begins with Absolute Zero instead of the freezing point of brine. It's the same idea as Kelvin, but with Fahrenheit rather than Celsius as the base unit. That means it would be easier to convert from Fahrenheit, which IIRC was the dominant scale throughout the world at the time, and Rankine. Its adoption by the scientific community might thus save Fahrenheit from being replaced by Celsius.
 
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