Originally Posted by
asmac
Not really random. As you note, 100 is a very high temp an 0 very low. In fact, it's based on the highest and lowest normal European temps and very useful as a human temperature scale.
According to my brief research, F thought that 100 was the highest we could stand without suffering heat stroke
Who really cares where water boils or freezes and, in any event, those actual number depends on many factors such as air pressure and dissolved minerals. And you can't divide or multiply temps so the "metric" thing is mostly irrelevant.
I was just needling acidfast7 about the "metric logic" of the Fahrenheit scale. But keep talking like that and you'll wind up using slugs and BTU and other weird units. As opposed to the simple clarity of needing 1 calorie to raise the temperature of 1 cubic centimeter of water (which weighs 1 gram) by 1 degree.