And your scale makes even less sense because you are ignoring time and air moisture (for the maximum temperature). You would probably die very quickly in a 120°C hot sauna if it had 100% moisture.
Same with the cold: I’d not survive much longer than a minute in -50°C without clothes but with adequate protection several hours seems possible.
minimum and maximum body temperature (we are measuring humans, not the environment).
I thought mentioning 50 as “normal human temperature” it was clear I was talking about body temperature
But the lowest body temp ever survived was 56.7F. making a scale out of that would be difficult because the distance from normal body temp to death is a lot closer on the upper range.
Fahrenheit is more of a scale of how the temperature feels to a human.
Fahrenheit decided to define the lowest possible temperature as 0° to avoid negative temperature, and the normal body temperatur of humans as 12°. Yes, he lived pre-metric times. Of course he soon realized that these big jumps of the 12° scale were pretty unusable, so he redefined an 1/8^th° of his first draft as the steps of his final scale. I don’t know whether he lived to realize that the coldest temperature he could achieve in his lab was not the coldest temperature possible. Oh, and he got the body temperature slightly wrong. Still pretty impressive achivement for 1708.
Somehow I’m a bit sad he didn’t keep the 12° scale. Just imagine Americans would have to take fever like: “the patient has 12⅞ °F”.
Maximum body temperature should be pretty obvious - at least with one or two degrees (Celsius) of wiggle room.
Though, with minimum body temperature, do you mean minimum while conscious or minimum survivable? Because there have been cases where people were successfully resuscitated after being submerged in freezing water for a very long time:
An 8-year-old boy fell through pond ice and was submerged for ≥147 minutes. Nadir peripheral body temperature was 7 °C (45 °F). After rewarming with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, prolonged hospitalization, and neurorehabilitation, the child recovered.
At 6-month follow-up, he was giving short commands, standing without support, riding a tricycle, eating soft foods, and relearning simple tasks.
Humans are mostly water though.
And your scale makes even less sense because you are ignoring time and air moisture (for the maximum temperature). You would probably die very quickly in a 120°C hot sauna if it had 100% moisture.
Same with the cold: I’d not survive much longer than a minute in -50°C without clothes but with adequate protection several hours seems possible.
minimum and maximum body temperature (we are measuring humans, not the environment). I thought mentioning 50 as “normal human temperature” it was clear I was talking about body temperature
But the lowest body temp ever survived was 56.7F. making a scale out of that would be difficult because the distance from normal body temp to death is a lot closer on the upper range.
Fahrenheit is more of a scale of how the temperature feels to a human.
Fahrenheit decided to define the lowest possible temperature as 0° to avoid negative temperature, and the normal body temperatur of humans as 12°. Yes, he lived pre-metric times. Of course he soon realized that these big jumps of the 12° scale were pretty unusable, so he redefined an 1/8^th° of his first draft as the steps of his final scale. I don’t know whether he lived to realize that the coldest temperature he could achieve in his lab was not the coldest temperature possible. Oh, and he got the body temperature slightly wrong. Still pretty impressive achivement for 1708.
Somehow I’m a bit sad he didn’t keep the 12° scale. Just imagine Americans would have to take fever like: “the patient has 12⅞ °F”.
But the lowest body temp ever survived was 56.7F.
Fahrenheit is more about how the temperature feels to humans. 0 is really fucking cold, and 100 is really fucking hot.
Ah, that makes a bit more sense.
Maximum body temperature should be pretty obvious - at least with one or two degrees (Celsius) of wiggle room.
Though, with minimum body temperature, do you mean minimum while conscious or minimum survivable? Because there have been cases where people were successfully resuscitated after being submerged in freezing water for a very long time:
https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jaccas.2025.104885