Fahrenheit and Celsius

One child came and told me “today’s temperature is 80”. I looked in my scale and said “it is 27”.

We both looked at the units – One was Fahrenheit and other was Celsius.

Now the questions came “what is Celsius and Fahrenheit?” I started related to what he already knows (any other two different units) – cm and inches.

We took one scale and saw “1 cm is this much and 1 inch is this much”………………after some time he exclaimed “so one is small and one is big but both are same temperature, which is NOW”.

I left him to ponder more………..he also did not want to know more.

Evening he came back to me and told “in my compass, I have both – see 90 F is 30C”.

Encouraged by his interest I showed him how to “convert C to F” – He saw the calculations and told me “I don’t like these complicated calculations, I like this compass, and this tell me temperature in both”.

Hmmm indication for me…….to keep quite for some time 🙂

He came again to me after some time “when are you taking us to Himalayas for KAA?”

He continued “I want to check the temperature going down the zero in my compass and see how it is in F and C”.

This time I was quite…..did not give any gyan:)
In the night he came to me and told – it is 25 and 80.
In the morning he came and told me it is 30 and 90.

Now we started pondering “If 30 is 90 then 25 should be 75 not 80 or it is approximate……….”. We checked the compass again. Now we have moved to find relationship of the data – we have started documenting the data………….may be we will derive our own formula to explore.

Another child pondered “What will be freezing temperature in Fahrenheit?

We also checked data in another equipment and saw “80 F is 27 C”. The child is of the opinion that except his compass all other equipments are not working properly.

We continue to explore………This reminded me a line, one of the parent shared “My son will be the scientist I never was :).

I wonder “we all stayed at knowing Newton’s laws” we could never move ahead from that – WHY? Possibly we only read what Newton discovered, we never looked at HOW he discovered ?


Tags: