A logic question. Take a shot. havn't got 1 good answer so far?

Question

If it is 0 degrees f today and it will be twice as cold tommorow, how cold will it be?

Answer 1

You cant have a "twice as cold".

But you can have a "half as hot"

cold doesnt exist... its merely our perception of the absence of heat.

In order to measure "degrees of coldness" we must have a scale that grows higher in value the colder it gets. And that wouldnt make any sense mathematically or scientifically, unless we are dealing with an absolute scale. There is no maximum heat value from which to measure "degrees less / colder than", as far as science knows, and so there is no absolute scale for coldness.

Answer 2

Trick question but it does have a real answer which is 459.67° Fahrenheit.

Temperatures are measured on different scales - Fahrenheit, Celsius (Centigrade), Kelvin and Rankine but only the Kelvin and Rankine scales are relative and that's because the coldest possible temperature (absolute zero) is the starting point for both these scales. With Celsius and Fahrenheit temps can be both above and below zero. In other words, 0°F isn't the coldest it can be.

Temp measures the amount of heat that is present and when the temp is 0°F it means there's already 459.67 degrees of heat present (-459.67°F is the coldest possible temperature). 0°F = 459.67°F of heat present.

What your question is saying is - there's 459.67°F of heat present today, there'll be twice as much tomorrow, what temp will it be tomorrow (twice as cold, twice as hot makes no difference, twice anything is the same as multiplying by 2).

So tomorrow there will be 919.34 (459.67 x 2) of heat present but this is measured relative to absolute zero, to convert to Fahrenheit we have to deduct 459.67 so the temp tomorrow will be 459.67°F.

- - - - - - - -

If you take 'twice as cold' as being the same as 'half as hot' then the answer would be 229.84°F (459.67 ÷ 2)

If 0°F was the coldest possible temp (which it isn't) then twice as cold (half as hot) would still be 0°F.

Answer 3

I took the following verbatim from www.mathforum.org. I would say it is all relative!!




"There is no really good answer to this question; the term "twice as cold"
is not well defined. A physicist might want to define it one way, but
someone deciding what to wear would have good reason for defining it
in a very different way. To the best of my knowledge, no one has actually
defined it quantitatively, in either of these ways or any other way.
Still, I will tell you my ideas on two ways "twice as cold" *could* be
defined if you insisted on doing so.

"Cold" is confusing in the same way that "short" or "small" is
confusing. If I say that I am twice as short as you, what I probably
mean is that I am half as tall as you. It isn't really a good way to
talk at all; it's best to say "half as tall" because it's less
confusing.

"Cold" is even more confusing than "short" because temperatures can be
negative, but height can never be negative (not the height of a
person, anyway). If "twice as cold" means "half the temperature", then
if the temperature is negative, "twice as cold" is *warmer*! For
instance, half of -10 degrees is -5 degrees, which is warmer than -10
degrees. If "twice as cold" meant "twice the temperature", it would go
in the right direction for negative temperatures, but not for positive
temperatures.

Then, too, there's the problem that "twice as cold" will mean
different things depending on whether you are using the Celsius or
Fahrenheit scale. "Twice as cold" as 0 C is 0 C, but 0 C is 32 F, and
half of this is 16 F, which is -8.9 C.

One solution is to choose a meaningful zero point for temperature.
Physicists determined that temperature has to do with how much energy
there is in the air (or whatever you're taking the temperature of.)
This energy is all gone when you get down to a temperature of -273.15
degrees Celsius, or about -460 degrees Fahrenheit. This temperature is
called "absolute zero." The scientists then invented two new
temperature scales: Kelvin, which is the degrees C plus 273.15, and
Rankine, which is the degrees F plus 460. That means that 0 degrees on
either scale is absolute zero.

Therefore I propose that if you insist on saying "twice as cold," we
should mean this by it: "half the temperature on the Kelvin (or
Rankine) scale." By this definition, "twice as cold as 0 C" is half of
273.15 K, which is 136.57 K. Converting this back to Celsius, we get
-136.58 C.

That's very cold. I don't think it will ever be "twice as cold as 0
degrees" in either Fahrenheit or Celsius. This definition of "twice as
cold" might satisfy a low-temperature physicist, who is concerned
about the amount of energy in a substance, but it does not agree with
our everyday idea of cold.

Our everyday use of "twice as cold" might be something like, "It's so
cold that I need to wear twice as much clothing." If I wanted to
invent a mathematical meaning for "twice as cold" that would fit this
idea, I would pick a temperature that is neither warm nor cold,
perhaps 65 F. Then "how cold it is" would mean "how many degrees below
65 F," and "how hot it is" would mean "how many degrees above 65."
Then 45 F would be "twice as cold" as 55 F, and -65 F would be twice
as cold as 0 F. (That's still very cold!)

You can see that this is a very different definition from the first
one. It makes more sense according to our everyday idea of cold, but
it has one problem: some international agency has to set that "neither
cold nor warm" temperature. Judging from the battles some families
have over thermostat settings, I don't think this will be easy!

So I say again, I would rather avoid the phrase "twice as cold"
altogether."

- Doctor Rick, The Math Forum
http://mathforum.org/dr.math/

Answer 4

0 degrees F

Answer 5

I believe that cold is an opinion word as there is no actual thing as the cold as it is only an absense of heat. also unit converting to others such as celcius or kelvin don't work because when you manipulate the other forms of units by multiplying you are changing the number at a different rate as you would be if you were using farenheit.

Answer 6

0 degrees f is actually 32 below freezing so twice as cold would be 64 below freezing or -32 degrees f.

Answer 7

You could measure it in Kelvin (absolute temperature) so

K = (°F + 459.67) ÷ 1.8 so O f is 255 ish kelvin, so if it was 127 ish kelvin tomorrow it would be twice as cold.

You have asked a question in a relative measurment scale, so puting it in to the absolute temperature scale would be the best way to go.

Answer 8

We could do it this way: 0 degrees f = -17.7 degrees C.
If it's twice as cold as that, the temperature
will be -35.4 degrees C, which converts to -31.7 degrees f.
Brrrr!!

Answer 9

absolute zero in Fahrenheit is -459.67, so from zero degrees F, twice as cold would be -229.835 degrees F.

Answer 10

-32 degrees Fahrenheit

Convert to Celisius then answer the question, then convert back to Fahrenheit.

0 degree Fahrenheit = -17.77777777777778 degrees Celius

-17.77777777777778 * 2 = -35.555555555555555556

Convert -35.555555555555555556 degrees Celsius back to Fahrenheit
-35.555555555555555556 degrees Celsius
= -32 degrees Fahrenheit