How Hot or Cold is it? Trivia Quiz

Answer: 0 C (32 F)

Water melts at 0 degrees C or 32 degrees F. The official scale is now calibrated to water at a specific purity and varies these exact values by a tiny amount of less than a degree. For practical purposes, these values have remained largely unchanged over the course of several tiny adjustments to the official value ranges of both temperature scales.

Answer: -79 C (-109 F)

This falls exactly at -78.5 C or -109.2 F. At atmospheric pressure, carbon dioxide does not exist in a liquid state so, technically, it cannot melt. When solid carbon dioxide heats up enough for a state change, it jumps directly from a solid to a gas in a process known as sublimation. You have witnessed this if you have ever seen dry ice "melting" (technically, subliming). If you see any vapor traces at all it is likely freezing and releasing nearby water in the atmosphere but the carbon dioxide itself is just "gone".

At higher pressures carbon dioxide can exist as a liquid and this is used in commercial production of dry ice. The gas (often obtained as a biproduct of other large scale chemical processes) is first stored in chambers at moderate temperatures but very high pressure which liquifies it. It is then released to another chamber atatmospheric pressure at which point some of the material turns to carbon dioxide gas. This has a cooling effect on the chamber such that the remaining material turns to carbon dioxide snow which can be compressed into the convenient blocks.

Answer: -60 C (-50 F)

The temperature varies a bit but averages right around this temperature with surprisingly little major shifting as you move toward or away from the equator. If you ever wondered why commercial airlines have planes with windows that don't open, that is why. Lack of oxygen, coupled with these freezing temperatures, makes pressurized cabins not just a comfort luxury but a survival necessity when travelling at altitude. If you have ever seen footage of high altitude aircraft without pressurized cabins, even at altitudes not quite so high as this, the crew can be seen wearing heavy clothing to deal with the cold.

Answer: 70 C (160 F)

You may not have had any trouble with the "regular" boiling point of water but did you know that as you climb higher and higher, the pressure drops enough that on top of Everest, water boils around 70 degrees C or 160 degrees F? If you didn't already know this, it makes logical sense if you think it through. Less pressure pushing down on a liquid means molecules are more apt to escape when heated/excited.

This phenomenon of boiling point depression with altitude has led to jokes from avid adventurers when climbing Everest, along the lines of "If I cannot have a cuppa while enjoying that view, then what is the point?"

Though the majority of the world has adopted the metric system friendly Celsius scale, it may not just be stubborn traditionalism causing the United States and a few other Western Hemisphere nations to cling to Fahrenheit. For weather forecasting, the smaller range of temperature between degrees in Fahrenheit matches better with the limit of typical human perception of temperature change and weather reports in some Celsius using nations have retained Fahrenheit reports even many years after officially converting to Celsius.

Answer: 27000 C (50000 F)

It isn't quite the hottest thing on (or around) the earth, but the ones that outdo lightning typically involve particle accelerators and very short durations associated with dissipating energy shifts. The heat of lightning, though also short lived, seemed a bit more tangible and relateable, though hopefully you never get close enough to feel it yourself. It has quite a range of temperatures based on a number of factors but tops out at about 27000 C. For those few fractions of a second, lightning can be around five times hotter than the surface of the sun!

The electrical effects are typically the much greater issue if living things get too close to a bolt, since the heat dissipates rapidly in the air. I have heard stories though of potatoes being cooked in the ground near a lightning strike.

Answer: -273 C (-460 F)

The exact value of absolute zero, the theoretical lowest possible temperature, would fall at -273.15 C or -459.67 F. Because there are scientific formulations where a temperature scale normalized to this true zero value is more expedient, the Kelvin and Rankine scales were introduced. They are analogs of the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales respectively, but with their zero values set to absolute zero. So 0 degrees C would be equal to 273.15 K. The Kelvin scale is used heavily in the sciences and is expressed verbally without the familiar "degrees" associated with Celsius and Fahrenheit temperature values. So to say 14 K for instance you would say 14 Kelvin or "14 kay" for short. As Fahrenheit has fallen into wider and wider disuse, so has the Rankine scale.

Despite ongoing attempts to perfect supercooling methods, absolute zero has never been reached in laboratory conditions, though scientists have come closer and closer (within smaller and smaller fractions below 1 K..into the range of billionths at the date of this quiz) over the last few decades.

Answer: -39 C (-38 F)

Mercury is well known as one of only two metals to exist as a liquid at "room temperature" which gives it a number of useful applications in electrical circuits. The toxicity concerns that have come to light over the last few decades have caused it to be used less and less though.

Also note the similar numbers of the two temperature scales here. The two scales are both linear but with different slopes. Their intersection point is at exactly -40 degrees.

Answer: 100 C (212 F)

At 100 degrees C or 212 degrees F. I don't have a whole lot more to say here so it seems like a good place to sneak in the conversion equations between scales in case you ever need to do it manually.
F = 1.8C + 32
C = (F-32)/1.8

So if you have a Celsius value and want to know the equivalent in Fahrenheit, multiply it by 1.8 and then add 32. To go the other way, take the Fahrenheit number minus 32, then divide by 1.8.

Answer: 1000 C (1800 F)

Not surprisingly, there is a fair bit of variability here depending on a lot of factors such as type of minerals in the molten rock and shape of the volcanic vent. There is also the issue of outside environment. Lava spilling immediately into water, for instance, cools quite a bit faster than in air) which is why I specified it as fresh.

Looking at the moment of ejection, before any external cooling happens, it can range from about 700-1200 C (1300-2200 F). Magma would have a similar range of temperature fluctuation but is several hundred degrees hotter than its corresponding lava, ranging higher and higher the deeper in the earth you go.

Magma temperature would also be largely dependent on material composition and other factors like the laws of pressure-temperature interplay. These have interesting effects deep inside the earth, where the inner core is solid despite having extremely high temperatures approaching that of the surface of the sun. This is due to inability or the core to expand with, literally, the weight of the world pushing down on it. In any case, all of it is well above any of the cooler choices but still quite a way short of the champion of this quiz.

Answer: 41 C (106 F)

This fluctuates a bit year by year but has held near this number over the last 100 years. Remember that this is an average, so it can go even higher! However it stays pretty stagnant throughout with minimal rainfall in the entire month of around 1.2 cm or half an inch.