Temperature Riddle

[georgeous]

I remember a kind of riddle or shall i say brain teaser which asked "If one day it was 0C in london, then the next day it was twice as cold, what temperature would it be the day after." Anyone got an intellectual explanation as to the answer?

[mjhunt59]

use the Fahrenheit scale and half what temperature it is in Fahrenheit?

[georgeous]

Ok, and what if it was 0 Fahrenheit and it was twice as hot what then? :P

[whowhatwhy]

use the kelvin scale?!

[georgeous]

OK! FINE! Twice as hot as 0K??????????????????? :P

No more lower scales so ha!

At least not that i know of lol.

[Mr.Nose]

the nosemen are coming

[CT]

You can't get 0K. More likely it would mean twice as hot as 0 F.
Or perhaps more likely still, the weather person made some sort of grammatical error.

[jake-the-peg]

This was discussed here:
http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Science/Questio n184956.html
and here
http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Science/Questio n262316.html

The Kelvin scale is based around absolute zero :

0 degrees kelvin is where there is no energy in a body (as it happens an impossibility) so if it is twice as hot as absolute zero there is still no energy in the system and the temperature is still 0 because obviously 2x0 = 0

[Loosehead]

This is one of those subjective nonsensical riddles. If it's 0c then it's 32F so twice as cold would be 16F ie -8.9c but that's just one interpretation. I mean the surface of the sun is a 1000 times cooler than the corona but would you saythe surface of the sun is cold/

[brachiopod]

The Celcius and Fahrenheit scales are arbitrary< scales and thus you could make as much sense by asking what the temperature is in degrees brachiopod ( � pod).

Only by using the absolute scale (Kelvin) can it at least make sense, though not be particularly useful.

In that case, 0�C is 273.15 K, so if it was twice as cold (ie half as hot) it would be 136.575 K.

If you start at 0 K (zero Kelvin) then the answer is 0 K, just as if you travelled 0 km (or miles) one day and travelled half (or even twice) that distance the next day.

I'm sure I've been here before........

[Bert]

It makes just about as much sense to say that one thing is twice as hot as another as to say that something is twice as red as another. Obviously, 40 degrees K is twice as hot as 20 degrees K, but that is no more illuminating than saying that 40 is two times 20. One you start using Fahrenheit and Celsius scales you are really into la-la land.