Here is the answer, without further ado: neither. Neither of them is colder: -40° Fahrenheit is exactly equal to -40° Celsius! Equal? Well yes it is, no kidding!
We apologize for the trick question, so no matter which one you chose in our little Facebook quiz, you were in fact wrong haha!
Before I tell you more, first here’s the proof from our holiness-the-reference-for-everything (Google), for those who don’t follow us often enough to know that we never make anything up… and who might not believe us (there were really many that thought we were lying when we shared that Canada is not as big as maps lead you to believe).
I’ll tell you what this has to do with travel (yes there is a pretty simple link) but first of all: yes, this fun fact is quite surprising.
It’s one of those things that our brains just have a hard time to process, since we all know that temperatures of +40°F and +40°C are soooooo different and we are so very used to having fahrenheit and celsius temperatures that are very far apart (at least for more commonly used temperature levels).
Almost every single time I tell someone about it, they don’t believe me but yes, -40°F and -40°C are the exact same temperature, because that’s the precise point where both scales intersect.
That’s the beauty of that measuring unit whose formula is (X°F – 32) x 5/9… oh how Americans love to be different from almost every other country in the world and use the imperial system.
Speaking of, here is a pretty interesting map.
So what does this have to do with travel?
Usually we stick to spotting cheap flight deals and posting travel tips and travel inspiration articles… but I’m kind of passionate about trivia; useless statistics and miscellaneous factoids.
I must not be the only one among our readers to like that, because it has to be related to loving travel: to me, travel is all amount being extremely curious and wanting to know more about random things, no matter how futile it may seem.
Like how other cultures live, how everything is in their country… in short, learning.
So since the media has made a big deal of the record colds in the US in the past week, I couldn’t help myself from annoying a few people by telling them that -40° is the same no matter the measuring unit used. I figured I might as well share in case others are intellectually curious enough to be interested in learning about this!
Bottom Line
Yes, turns out -40°F and -40°C are exactly the same temperature. I hope you feel good about learning something new, a feeling we all enjoy when traveling and should nurture at home too! If you enjoyed learning this, your friends surely would to, so don’t be shy and share this post!
Did you know about this? Do you enjoy learning about random facts like this?
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