Why are records always "SMASHED!!!"

[FenceFurniture]

I went out to the shed earlier for 10 minutes and that was enough to convince me to stay indoors

On the contrary Rod. This is the scene from last week's 38° day.

IMG_20190118_190040.jpg

In the background you can see the shed aircon humming away. (the beer and book are out of frame)

The rest is self explanatory.

Just going down now to replicate it.....

[Picko]

The rest is self explanatory.

Yeah your bed made up on the floor explains a lot. You've been thrown out of the house! (insert smiley) Can't get smileys to work.

[rustynail]

Air conditioning is very bad for wood, but very nice for wood workers. But in the temperate climes of the Blue Mnts? What a bloody woozer?

[FenceFurniture]

What a bloody woozer?

[ian]

Ok, just to drag this back on topic, and away from how many beans make 5, and the History of the Thermometer

let me have some fun !!

[BobL]

Well, apart from a couple of 40º days a week ago the weather here has been great for shed work - trouble I have been too knackered to do more than a few minutes work at the bench and then I need at least a half hour rest. Sleep is ruined. Last night I got 4 hours instead of the usual 3. Went to bed at ~8:30pm, fell almost instantly to sleep but cramps kicked in around 10:30 pm,got up and stayed up till 2:30am. Back to bed for not what I call real sleep (ie few minutes doses every 10 minutes or so)until and got up at 4:30am.

[rustynail]

One should always put there best side to the camera.

[swk]

let me have some fun !!

Ian,
derailling the thread again (I only read it today) as an answer to your question about how accurate they read the thermometers to in the old days, I thought maybe I could download some data and do some clever statistics with the fractions. So I downloaded the max temperatures for Adelaide (West Terrace) from 1900. Turns out I cant do the stats that I thought I could, there was a flaw in my logic (.

However, after some hard maths graft, I did notice that if you convert say 62.4F to Celcius you get 16.888...C which rounds dup to 16.9C. Similarly 62.5F = 16.94444...C rounds down to 16.9C also. So pairs of consecutive 1/10F round to a single 1/10C value. EXCEPT where the C value is x.0 or x.5 there is only one x.xF and the conversion is exact, no need to round. EG 62.6F = 17.0C.
SO any values in the modern Celcius record which end in x.5 or x.0 must have come from an single decimal point value x.xF without rounding. In the Adelaide data for 1900 there are 90* values like this (out of 365). Because there are other (rounded) values in the modern data set between x.0 and x.5 we know that
1. there must have been fahrenheit values read with a smaller resolution than 0.5C
2. in the 90 values mentioned above, the corresponding fahrenheit values XX.x, the integers 0, 1, 2,...9 all appear for x (except 6)

- in 1900 the BOM in Adelaide were reading the max temp to a resolution of 0.1F

* if it was a truly random selection of fractions, the number of x.0 and x.5s would have been 73. So it looks as though there could be a little human bias in the readings.

Regards
SWK

[ian]

* if it was a truly random selection of fractions, the number of x.0 and x.5s would have been 73. So it looks as though there could be a little human bias in the readings.

I think it more likely that your data set -- daily max temperature for 1900 -- is not large enough and you have been caught by statistical variation.

But thank you very much for the "maths graft"
and particularly for establishing that the original Fahrenheit record has a precision of 0.1 degree.


The point I'm trying to get across to the Physics Professor, is that measuring and recording the daily temperature is not a lab exercise, it's a civil activity.
The Adelaide thermometer was likely a recording type with a two metal bars, one that was pushed up by rising mercury, the other pulled down by falling temperature and was probably only read twice per day, with the previous night's minimum recorded at 9:00 AM, and that day's maximum some time late in the afternoon -- late enough to be after the peak temperature, but early enough to be passed on to the press for the following day's published weather report.

[swk]

I think it more likely that your data set -- daily max temperature for 1900 -- is not large enough and you have been caught by statistical variation.

Hence "could"

)

SWK

[ian]

regarding the answer to the question: what is 2 + 3

Just let me repeat

It's a joke Bob.

perhaps go back and read the different responses

I am reminded of a Temp-Time graph of water supposedly coming up to the boil from room temp submitted in an experimental report by a grade 11 chemistry student back in 1978. The graph showed a quick rise in temp to about 35ºC and then it did not change much after that. Instead of placing the bulb in the water the student had been holding the thermometer bulb between his fingers and had the other end in heating water. I think that student ended up doing engineering at Uni.

and it's perhaps best if I not comment on the quality and teaching prowess of newly minted W.A. high school science teachers in the 1970s

[BobL]

and it's perhaps best if I not comment on the quality and teaching prowess of newly minted W.A. high school science teachers in the 1970s

Well I do remember working very hard with that particular student as he was very keen, came from a very disadvantaged background and english was not his first language, However, I would not like to claim all the credit for getting him into uni. He was also quite talented at maths, I think he got something like 95% for his calculus subject mark.

Your point above about the measurement being a civil activity is precisely my point. I'm confident the thermometers at the Adelaide BOM would have been up to a 0.1C measurement task but the personnel and other circumstances might not have been.

[FenceFurniture]

Just in:
https://www.theguardian.com/australi...onth-on-record