Do Americans understand celsius?

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I spent my early childhood in a Celcius country before moving to America.

For me, Celcius and Fahrenheit are completely different concepts. I understand how cold or hot something is when given temperature in either measurement, but I cannot convert between the two.

What I don't get is what do Americans when they say "10 degrees below freezing".

In Fahrenheit water freezes at 32 degrees. So when Americans say "10 degrees below freezing" do they mean minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit or do they mean positive 22 degrees Fahrenheit?

Typically, we mean +22 degrees F when we say that. However, I am an oddball here as I usually relate all of the temperatures that I deal with in the laboratory on a daily basis to the Kelvin temperature scale. At the low end, some Americans may know about dry ice temperatures (195 K) by experience (ie. freezing warts, shipping foods), but most have never handled liquid nitrogen (77 K) or even liquid helium (4 K) by themselves. That is sad.

When I was a child (in the Sixties' USA) I was a closet Celsius person in a Fahrenheit nation. I used to wonder why the freezing point of water was 32 degrees. I thought that that was ret*d,and that whoever set the system up should have made the freezing point of water be "zero degrees". Learned later that that is exactly what they do in celsius (set the zero point to the freezing point of fresh water).

But today in my middle age its hard to switch to thinking in celsius. My ideas of temperature comfort are to much pegged to Fahrenheit numbers.

Most of my reading is in the physical sciences so I am at home with the MKS system (meter, kilogram, second). I tend to reckon length in metric units and I am totally unused to using non-metric energy units. I have to use a converter app to get from BTUs to kiloJoules and I reckon temperature in Kelvin 273.15 Kelvin = 0 Celsius.

Here is an historical note. Celsius originally set his scale 100 at freezing and 0 at boiling. But it was soon inverted to be 0 at freezing and 100 at boiling. There is an absolute temperature scale, the Rankine scale which has the same size degree as the Fahrenheit scale. Freezing point of brine is 0 degrees Fahrenheit and 459.7 degrees Rankine. Freezing point of fresh water is 32 degrees Fahrehheit and 491.7 degrees Rankine. Absolute zero is 0 degrees in both the Kelvin scale and the Rankine scale.

I still use Fahrenheit here in the UK but many people use Celsius. Its still all very confusing for me living in the UK as we measure things in both imperial and metric based on age or even what we are talking about for example a persons weight is always stones and pounds even though we are meant to be metric. A car tyre is measured in both eg 18 inches diameter by 45mm depth by 225mm width. I never did get why that was and there are numerous other intances but I won't go on.

Someone else on WP posted that that is a world over thing about tires. Theyre the one commodity thats measured in both metric and imperial at the same time, but imperial in diamater, and metric in width.

OMG, this really irritates me that America still uses Fahrenheit and empirical (English) units when the rest of the advanced world uses metric and Celsius (or Kelvin in chemical labs). I have this debate with folks on a somewhat regular basis (I am American). I find that the reasons no one wants to switch is for really small-minded things like "because that's the language of football!" (American football) or "I don't want to replace all the tools in my toolbox." (Okay, on a certain level that's understandable).

Thomas Jefferson actually advocated for switching to metric units in 1790 or so, but the decision pretty much boiled down to "Is that what the crown is doing? Nope, forget it."

In a more direct answer to your question, no, most American do not understand Celsius. Actually, a better way of saying it is that most Americans cannot conceptualize Celsius because they have always learned Fahrenheit and Celsius means nothing to them. Although in STEM fields you will find that most folks do understand it and are just as frustrated as I am about America using outdated units that don't fit into scientific formulas.

As to another query I saw where someone wasn't sure how to convert:

C = (F-32)/1.8
F = 1.8 * C + 32

Im in USA, I work with celcious. It's how I naturally read my weather and what i set it to on my phone.
but then I forget that no one else does this so when I say it's 27 degrees people are very confused
Also, I forget how to fahrenheit because I do this so it takes a second for me to understand the temperature if someone else tells it to me.

I obviously prefer celcious. But other than in maths and school sometimes, no one American really does this I know

I always see these and it still makes me laugh.

Well I am used to Fahrenheit, but I try to look at the Cecilius degrees as well same with trying to also see the metric mesurement of something in feet, I suppose I just hope some day I can get used to those as well since the rest of the world uses it and I wont endlessly have to look up 'how many meters is in this many feet' and things like that on google when talking to people outside the U.S.

I don't think they know it.... Americans and British tend to do everything in reverse from the rest of the world.

Simple algebra Celsius = 5/9 x (Fahrenheit - 32) The Celsius temperature is always a smaller number than the corresponding Fahrenheit temperature. Normal body temperature is about 37.5 degrees Celsius. Water freezes at 0 Celsius and boils at 100 Celsius (assuming normal atmospheric pressure).