this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2025
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TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

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It always bugs me when a character makes this mistake, which happens WAY TOO OFTEN (quokk.au)
submitted 1 week ago by SatyrSack@quokk.au to c/tenforward@lemmy.world
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According to SI convention, the kelvin is never referred to nor written as a degree. The word "kelvin" is not capitalized when used as a unit. It may be in plural form as appropriate (for example, "it is 283 kelvins outside", as for "it is 50 degrees Fahrenheit" and "10 degrees Celsius").[5][63][64][65] The unit's symbol K is a capital letter,[39] per the SI convention to capitalize symbols of units derived from the name of a person.[66] It is common convention to capitalize Kelvin when referring to Lord Kelvin[5] or the Kelvin scale.[67]

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[–] becausechemistry@lemy.lol 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

dorks

Some of us use the Kelvin scale on a nearly daily basis in our jobs that primarily focus on sweating the small details.

[–] SatyrSack@quokk.au 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

jobs that primarily focus on sweating the small details

Anyone with a job like that automatically qualifies as a "dork (complimentary)"

[–] queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I use the term with affection, I think it's that understanding of the importance of minutia to the shared understanding of complex topics that makes people engage on things like "K vs °K" in a serious way, and I think it's a conversation worth having. I don't use kelvins every day and I don't really think I'm an expert, I think despite my last little joke I could be convinced that saying "degrees kelvin" does more to confuse than it does to clarify: I think there are good reasons to adhere to conventions in certain contexts, especially scientific ones, so I think the upset about "degrees kelvin" comes from a sincere place, I just haven't seen any evidence to suggest that breaking the convention in this case causes any real confusion, and at least personally, using °K helps me distinguish kelvins from other uses of k or K suffixes or constants. So I guess it would be more accurate to say "°K gang for now given my understanding of the current body of evidence", but I wanted to be snappy.

[–] becausechemistry@lemy.lol 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I understand you’re not coming from a place of malice. But consider that not understanding why something is important is not a great reason to consider it unimportant if, nearly universally, experts consider it important.

[–] queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 week ago

I don't think it's unimportant. I think clarity and disambiguation in communication are more important than strict adherence to a convention, and as far as I can tell °K was folded into K because the temperature interval °K is identical to the thermodynamic temperature K and the CGPM picked K because it more correctly conforms to the SI convention of single-letter unit designations. I get why they combined them, but considering that °K is (or was) exactly equal to K I prefer to use it to typographically distinguish it from other k-types in my writing, especially if I'm writing equations by hand. I've been reading up on the CGPM proceedings around defining the K and I think there are good pedagogical reasons not to use °K when introducing the concept of thermodynamic temperature to students because it isn't a degree on a scale like Celsius, it's a plain old base unit just like any other. It may be that I'm just old enough to have been indoctrinated into the °K school of thought and now it's ingrained but in any case the visual distinction helps me and, since it is identical to K I don't think it introduces any new confusion. I probably wouldn't use it if I were teaching physics in high school but for my own use? °K all day.