Figuring Out Celsius-Fahrenheit

This is in response to your editorial (July 27), “Figuring It Out by Degrees.”

I have taught chemistry for 35 years at institutions of higher learning involving students with varying degrees of competence. Your claim--”But the usual method of converting from Fahrenheit to Celsius is cumbersome, difficult to remember and hard to do in your head. In degree of difficulty among algorithms, it is second only to extracting a square root with pencil and paper”--is unfortunate, to say the least.

This claim, coupled with your plea to teach the other method, which you think is better, is a disservice to the efforts of countless teachers.

The second method may look easier but it is not better, as the method you abhor, and the method you advocate are based upon one and the same principle.

You should be pleading to teach the principles and not the oft-repeated method of plugging numbers in recipes. Already our educational system suffers due to demand of the latter.

I suggest that the writer of the editorial enroll in a beginning chemistry class to learn the underlying principle to understand the method called by your editorial the “standard” method along the method involving the use of -40F and -40C.

Above all we should be learning the most important scale, independent of any man-made starting point, called the ABSOLUTE (Kelvin) scale on which the normal boiling point of water is 373.15 K (note that there is no degree sign before K).

BRAHAMA D. SHARMA

Professor of Chemistry

Los Angeles Pierce College