Talk:Rankine scale

Why is it a stub?

I am surprised to see that this article is labelled a stub. It gave me all the information I needed to write a Conversion Calculator, to be hosted at [1], involving temperatures.

Is it because it is short? What other information is required?

Fcalculators (talk) 22:18, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I had just finished reading the Page for “Rankine Scale,” and came across a question in the Talk section, posted by User: Fcalculators in 2010, which looks like the question went unanswered. I pose this question, also wondering why this Article was given a Stub rating.

Upon reading the criteria for the Article Grading system, I am interested in understanding just how a determination is made in the Grading of an article, for instance, from FA (Featured Article) and GA (Good Article), to a Stub and a Start article. I am quite clear I’m understanding understand the Objective criteria which must be met in order to achieve an FA, GA, B or C-Class Article, however I must ask how it is determined whether an article receives a Stub and/or a Start rating?

Also, I would surmise that there is Subjectivity in the rating of an article from a C-Class to a B-Class, or that of a Good Article (GA). Apart from the Wikipedia Help Page, which clearly describes the rationale for Grading an article accordingly, including both the Quality and Comprehensiveness of a particular Article, how is the final decision made and who makes that decision? Is the Grading decision made by an Individual, or by a Group of Editors, after an initial review from one Editor? It would be nice to understand the Process that takes place upon Grading an Article, so that one could approach reading a lower Graded article, say as perhaps suspicious in the overall Integrity of its Content.

I would appreciate any additional information which could be provided, apart from what was already well described and furnished in the article on Article Class Ratings.

Mark Halsey 17:53, 13 January 2018 (UTC)Regards, Mark Halsey Mark Halsey 17:53, 13 January 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Markhalsey (talk • contribs)

Error

The page states in the table in the upper right: "For temperature intervals rather than specific temperatures, 1°R = 1°F = 5⁄9°C = 5⁄9 K". Double check my math, but I believe it should read "1°R = 1°F = 9/5°C = 9/5 K" Tricln (talk) 18:17, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

This page states "A temperature of 459.67 °F is precisely equal to 0 °R" ... Shouldn't that be the other way around?

yes, fixed --JD79 19:02, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. now it said "A temperature of negative -459.67 °F is precisely equal to 0 °R." - now having the term 'negative' and the sign '-' in their is double negation and would result in the same thing as the above quote. I therefore removed the word negative. Regards, Dola chi-Trei, Trimbir. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.140.249.201 (talk) 20:22, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Is this scale really disused? I know it's antiquated, but I had a fluids class that encouraged being "bilingual" and so Rankine was used extensively.

I tend to agree - edited accordingly and added link to Rankine cycle - which is important.

Linuxlad 23:35, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I was told by my college Chemistry professor that Rankine was at one time widely used in US industry. --anonymous

The key is at one time. This unit is now obsolete, and mentioned here for completeness. -- Egil 09:26, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Nonsense. Degrees Rankine, unlike some of the other obsolete degrees mentioned in the other articles, are still used. Gene Nygaard 10:25, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If you insist, let me reprashe that: Rankine is antiquated. Really. -- Egil

'A competent scientist should be able to work in any system of units' (A Cavendish Professor of Physics to his flock, in the days when they had cgs, esu, emu, degrees Brix etc.) .

Many chemical engineering, thermodynamics, and heat transfer textbooks, used from Britain to the US to Singapore, use the Rankine scale. It may be antiquated in the same way that any non-metric units are antiquated, but it is still used.

I removed "now rarely used". I use it all the time (to my disappointment)! It is useful in thermodynamics when using US Customary units. — TheKMan^talk 23:08, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

that's rather arrogant. 'rarely' is not 'never'. perhaps you're the rarity. and by 'perhaps' i mean 'definitely'.-Heterodoxus (talk) 04:10, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Rankine degrees are still usefull in designing for those living in a Fahrenheit world. It may be antiqudated to acedemics in ivory towers but I use it along with the Stepahan Boltman Equation here in real life in my welding shop on heater designs. The heater ouputs are measured in antiqudated Fahrenheit/Rankine degree units. Most people around here relate to temperature in Fahrenheit degrees. Guess we're all antiqudated but any competent engineer should be able to work in units that the customer relates to. --JTH01 08:52, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Chemical Engineering at Imperial College, we have students and books from Europe, Africa, Asia and America. I have yet to see a single person use this scale and I think most people here would consider such a person to have a bizarre death wish. Rankine may be widely used in the United States, but that's a long way from being widely used full-stop. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.31.204.157 (talk) 12:54, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Petroleum engineering at University of Stavanger. I've used American textbooks that have included the Rankine scale along with SI units in some courses, including thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and chemical engineering. More importantly, it is used extensively in petroleum engineering, along with other oilfield units like psi, ft etc. I doubt the Rankine is an obsolete unit in the USA if it is sometimes used even in Norway.--152.94.83.208 (talk) 17:58, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Conversion expression for Celsius to Rankine is incorrect in box in top right corner of page. The expression should read [R] = (9/5 * [C]) + 491.67 and not [R] = ([C] + 491.67) * 9/5. The latter is not the inverse function of the Celsius to Rankine expression quoted and will not produce 491.67 Deg Rankine when converting a temperature of 0 Deg Celsius. -- Orinocobj (talk) 17:03, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Rankine cycle is more notable

It should be primary. --JWB 07:41, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Strong agree. I find the disambig page highly annoying. Who are all of these other Rankines? -66.41.19.135 (talk) 06:00, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Conversion Table

What is with the conversion table? I don't quite get it! Someone explain how I read that please? Many thanks! VanessaLylithe (talk) 05:17, 22 July 2012 (UTC) Note: To specify what I don't get, it's the red lines... Were some of them missing (or something)? VanessaLylithe (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:19, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Impartiality of reference

The article cites phys.org which cites wikipedia.org

That will not do. phys.org is authoritative on nothing and should not be referenced anywhere on wikipedia.

Wikipedia itself states of phys.org "PhysOrg is a ... news website..."

As far as which scale is used in which field, that is a large subject right through to malpractices, changes over time and so on. I suspect his ought to be reduced to pointing out things are a mess and pointing at some past paper(s) saying as much, preferably from Standards bodies, this after all is a metrology matter. (is the supposed link to meteorology a mistake?) Tchannon (talk) 00:43, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

The PhysOrg article doesn't actually cite WP. It says "for more information check out WP". Two very different things. It might have taken its words from WP originally, but there is no evidence of that and the burden of proof is on the idea that it did (otherwise we would be assuming every WP ref is circular if it is of recent vintage). The facts aren't so outrageous that they need really solid refs anyway. They're also true. Aeronautical engineering (my field) certainly uses Rankine, and feet/second, and slugs, and pounds-force, etc.! We use those units proudly because, well I don't know why, but we just do. Ultimately it doesn't matter as long as units are consistent and understandable - no "gram-force", or pound-mass, or the worst: "seconds of specific impulse".  :-)

108.7.2.66 (talk) 06:36, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Important? Maybe Not

Can anyone produce verifiable sources that dictate the importance of the Rankine scale? Who actually uses this on a regular basis? The only people I could think of would be American meteorologists, and even that, I am not so sure about. While it works just the same as Kelvin, so long as you don't mind using Fahrenheit, I can't see it being a very useful unit in terms of scientific research. Certainly the page is necessary, as a historical footnote, but if you needed a measurement that required a real temperature unit rather than degrees, you would mostly likely do the calculations in Kelvin, convert to Celsius, and then convert to Fahrenheit if you really needed the numbers. The only way I could see it being used would be if you only were given data in imperial units, and thus it is easier to convert them to Rankine directly and back again. And like the editor above me has stated, Physorg.com is not a valid source for this type of information. Please let me hear your thoughts on this.Spirit469 (talk) 07:06, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreampt of in your philosophy, Spirit469."  :-) Aeronautical engineers use it all the time (see my comment on the section above). I replaced the refs because they were less ugly than the two tags. The claims aren't so crazy as to call for super duper high quality citation. The claims are true as well. I declared the ref "good enough" and put it back in. I hope that's okay for you.

108.7.2.66 (talk) 06:46, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you. The second source you added is much more satisfactory.Spirit469 (talk) 04:08, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

The Degree Symbol

NIST does not "recommends against using the degree symbol when citing Rankine in NIST publications"

I've taken the liberty of shuffling the contents of this page around to bring all of the posts about the degree symbol into one location. Normally I wouldn't get involved in this discussion but the current article statement that "The US National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends against using the degree symbol when citing Rankine in NIST publications." is clearly incorrect. If you follow the reference to NIST, the page is titled "The NIST Guide for the use of the International System of Units". SI units are all metric, Rankine is not. I read this NIST document to say; NIST documents will use SI units, not anything about the degree symbol and Rankine units. In fact if you read the NIST document through to appendix B.8 (conversion tables) it says "Caution: The units listed in column 1 are in general not to be used in NIST publications, with the exception of those few in italic type." The few in italic are SI units. I.e. do not use non-SI units for general use in NIST publications.

https://www.nist.gov/physical-measurement-laboratory/nist-guide-si-appendix-b8

The Wikipedia article originally said The US National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends against using degrees Rankine in NIST publications. (this is almost correct, it really says; use SI units)

This was changed to The US National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends against using the degree symbol when citing Rankine in NIST publications

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rankine_scale&diff=743831554&oldid=740477030

The justification for this change was an article in Science Notes.

https://sciencenotes.org/why-there-is-no-degree-in-kelvin-temperature/

The Science Notes article does indeed say "NIST advises against using the degree when citing Rankine temperatures", but is completely wrong in this statement. I have not found anywhere that NIST says "don't use the degree symbol with Rankine (except Wikipedia and the Science Notes article). NIST does use the degree symbol with Rankine in their table of conversion factors, which kind of points out the error in the statement.

[From the NIST conversion tables appendix A.8] degree Rankine (°R) kelvin (K) T/K = (T/°R)/1.8

The British Standards organization (BSI Standards) also uses the degree symbol with Rankine in the conversion tables in BS350.

https://www.scribd.com/document/359729247/bs-350-part-1-94-conversion-factors-and-tables-pdf

I don't have a dog in this show. I really don't care whether this Wikipedia article says to use the degree symbol or not. But it bothers me that it says "NIST recommends against using the degree symbol" when NIST is using the degree symbol with Rankine.

My suggestion would be to change the current statement (20180528)

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology recommends against using the degree symbol when citing Rankine in NIST publications.

to something like

The use of the degree symbol with Rankine is somewhat contentious with some citations being clearly against using the degree symbol and others using the degree symbol. Standards organizations such as NIST and BSI use SI units and avoid the controversy, but when these organizations list Rankine units in conversion tables they use the degree symbol".

I'm not really happy with this phrasing so if you have an alternate phrasing or clarification of this statement please say so. EE JRW (talk) 03:41, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

° degrees

In the text and in one table, the symbol is R. In the other table it is °R. Which one is right? Rankine are degrees like Celsius or are like kelvin? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.17.206.97 (talk) 01:30, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

i would say that, if the kelvin article is to be believed, it would not use the term "degree" because since it is an absolute scale, it is not a degree of anything. (The omission of "degree" indicates that it is not relative to an arbitrary reference point such as the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales, but rather an absolute unit of measure which can be manipulated algebraically). but usage isn't always consistent... and since rankine are so rarely used anymore i'd be surprised if one could settle this issue resolutely. regardless, though, this article should stick to one or the other for consistency's sake.

Heterodoxus (talk) 04:06, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

It is an absolute scale, but convention dictates that the symbol should use the degree symbol, as in °R. The rankine scale is still used in petroleum engineering, I certainly wouldn't call it rarely used. It's convenient for thermodynamic calculations when working with imperial units. I've never seen it shown as R without the degree symbol. Since petroleum is where the unit is still widely used, and in recent publications it has still been called "degree Rankine" (see the Petroleum Engineering Handbook VII, Indexes and Standards, 2007), I'll go ahead and add the degree symbol to the article. 130.49.5.10 (talk) 23:10, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

In every physics and chemistry book I've ever seen, it has always omitted the ° symbol on Rankine, because it is an absolute scale. When read aloud, you would say "six hundred rankine", not "six hundred degrees rankine" Until a cite can be given stating that the symbol does belong, it should be omitted. Peabody80 (talk) 20:33, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

---

It would be nice to know in what way the Rankine temperature scale is used. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.17.242.76 (talk) 02:27, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, basically whenever you want to describe temperature relative to absolute zero - it is just as valid as the Kelvin scale and not "antiquated" (basically don't believe anything you read in Wiki-land, with the possible exception of this statement) in any way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.243.164.201 (talk) 22:04, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I concur with 69.243.164.201. One of the problems with the "metric system" is that so many people trained only in the metric system are so ignorant of other systems. It often comes off, strangely, as a kind of arrogance, a sense of superiority. The metric system is just as arbitrary as other systems and also as frequently used inconsistently (kilogram-force, etc.) About the only thing it has going for it is that system of tens and tenths, but even that is easily grafted on to other systems - and it frequently is! "Metric-centric" thinking is just ignorance-based snobbery!  :-)

108.7.2.66 (talk) 07:09, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 February 2014

i have found evidence that in America Rankine has no degree symbol so this page and others will be excluding this information ([2] on page 20) 70.41.96.39 (talk) 17:43, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Pages 20-21 are not available in that preview, do you have another source or perhaps there is someone who can make the edit that can find that book? — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 17:53, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

• In my preview, pages 20-21 are available, and the text says:

  Rankine (R): An absolute temperature scale that uses the Fahrenheit scale, William Rankine's system declares the freezing point of water to be 459.67 Rankine. [...] Note that Kelvin and Rankine scales don't use the degree symbol. The degree symbol was dropped from the Kelvin scale in 1967, and some textbooks have followed suit with Rankine. - Mike Rosoft (talk) 18:00, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

• "...and some textbooks have followed suit..." in a "For dummies" book doesn't inspire confidence that this is what is accepted in the scientific community. I have no issue with someone else making the change if they are comfortable with that, but I am not unless there is a scientific journal or some such that says it. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 18:11, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Rankine is just R

it may sound kinda wired but in the engineering for dummies book it says that Rankine is just R ([3] pg 20) Wes1230 (talk) 18:08, 18 February 2014 (UTC)wes1230

• This has already been covered above. An official publication from the National Institute of Standards and Technology at U.S. Department of Commerce [4] lists it as a 'degree Rankine'. I am not opposed to changing the article to mention that the unit is sometimes referred to as just 'Rankine', but it would probably need a better reference than a "for dummies" popular book. (User:Peabody80 above has said that he has always seen it as a 'Rankine' rather than a 'degree Rankine', so the references surely exist.) - Mike Rosoft (talk) 20:10, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

i have a text book that shows Rankine as just R sorry to strain this but I fell if Kelvin can be units of CELSIUS (not centigrade you Englishmen :D) then Rankine can be too: "Modern Engineering Thermodynamics - Textbook with Tables Booklet" read it in google books — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wes1230 (talk • contribs)

• The source [5] says (page 10): "Notice that we do not use the degree symbol (°) with either the Kelvin or the Rankine absolute temperature scale symbols. The reason for this is by international agreement as explained later in this chapter." - Mike Rosoft (talk) 21:31, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
• I think the references are good; I have added the following text to the article: "By analogy with Kelvin, some authors call the unit Rankine, omitting the degree symbol." - Mike Rosoft (talk) 05:31, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

References

Engineering use

For some engineering applications in the United States, temperature is measured using the Rankine scale. http://www.physorg.com/tags/temperature/

Cites

Other engineering fields in the U.S. also rely upon the Rankine scale (a shifted Fahrenheit scale) when working in thermodynamic-related disciplines such as combustion.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA

So not an RS.

Removed until some reliable source is found. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:55, 2 April 2017 (UTC).

What is the Themo metric liquid used in Rankine's thermometer?

Please anyone tell a answer for this question. I searched many times but I couldn't find answer. 1.22.19.187 (talk) 14:39, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

In general, it appears that the same temperature measuring technologies are used regardless of the scale. In other words, a "Rankine's thermometer" is just like any other thermometer, just calibrated to the Rankine scale of units. An ordinary thermometer using mercury as the thermometric liquid, for example, which often has parallel Fahrenheit and Celsius scales together, could just as easily have Rankine and Kelvin scales, as well.Albanaco (talk) 18:30, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Ordinary thermometers generally use alcohol or another hydrocarbon as the fluid, mercury was previously the common type for medical thermometers mostly and even for that use case it has been largely obsoleted. 2600:4040:5205:CC00:24D8:E317:24F2:247C (talk) 06:31, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

"Raskine"

@Loew Galitz: "Raskine" now redirects to this article: is this a misspelling, or does it have a different meaning? Jarble (talk) 00:43, 8 October 2023 (UTC)