Serway & Jewett — Temperature: Problem 1

You are working as a research assistant for a professor whose research area is thermodynamics. He points out to you that Daniel Fahrenheit used the best estimate of normal human body temperature as one of the points in defining the original Fahrenheit temperature scale. On the revised scale we now use, normal human body temperature is \( 98.6^\circ\text{F} \). Your professor proposes a new scale on which normal human body temperature would be exactly \( 100^\circ\text{N} \), where the unit \( ^\circ\text{N} \) is a degree on the New scale. The temperature of freezing water would be \( 0^\circ\text{N} \), as on the Celsius scale. Your professor asks you to determine the following temperatures on his new scale: (a) absolute zero, (b) the melting point of mercury (\( -37.9^\circ\text{F} \)), (c) the boiling point of water, and, for publicity at his expected future press conference, (d) the highest recorded air temperature on the Earth’s surface, \( 134.1^\circ\text{F} \) on July 10, 1913, in Death Valley, California.