What do plus and minus temperature signify

You don't need to say "plus" or "above zero". There is nothing wrong with adding a clarifying term, especially if you are comparing with below zero temperatures:. The words "plus" and "minus" should be used to qualify numbers, and you should use "positive" or "negative" as general adjectives.

You should say "a negative number". But this point is often not observed by native speakers, and "a minus number" is quite commonly heard. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Minus and plus a specific temperature degree weather Ask Question. Asked 2 years, 6 months ago. Active 2 years, 6 months ago.

Viewed 1k times. For instance we would probably say something like: It's 3 degrees below zero centigrade today. It's minus 3 degrees today. This is because they do not understand that the "minus" sign actually means that they are in negativity financially speaking i. Most simple minded thinks that there is nothing different just a sign of - in front and read it as MINUS. They do not even bother subtracting to get any answers. We have to do this with kids as well at an early age to prevent oversimplification and future generations of bankrupt and dispossessed adults.

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Learn more. Ask Question. Asked 5 years, 9 months ago. Active 3 years, 11 months ago. Viewed 28k times. Improve this question. Hank 4, 1 1 gold badge 21 21 silver badges 38 38 bronze badges.

Cute Cute 49 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 2 2 bronze badges. This question isn't specific enough. I assume you just mean weather. It's used colloquially enough that I would say it is correct if your intent is to communicate the temperature. If your intent is to use proper terminology on a weather paper, perhaps you should stick to the professional minus.

Note that "negative ten degrees" would be even more idiomatic than "minus ten degrees" if specifying, eg, the angle of the dive plane of an submarine. Azor-Ahai Nonetheless, that is the common, standard way of saying it when referring to temperatures. Azor-Ahai No specific sources as such, no—just my own experience with people from all over the English-speaking world.

There could well be pockets where negative is more common, I've just never experienced one. This weatherman prefers negative , but does say that most people use minus ; while this mathematician both agrees that most use minus and argues that's what it should be mathematically, anyway.

Couldn't find anyone saying that most people say negative. I live in a part of the US where the temperature pretty regularly dips below zero degrees Fahrenheit, and I've heard both minus X degrees and negative X degrees. However, the most common usage is X below zero.

Show 4 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Not common, but yes, interchangeable. Newspaper Usage However, my hypothesis of regional variation isn't correct though. Conclusion "Minus" is indeed what most North Americans and all Brits say. So temperature increases with increasing energy, from zero, asymptotically approaching positive infinity as the energy increases.

Not all systems have the property that the entropy increases monotonically with energy. In some cases, as energy is added to the system, the number of available microstates, or configurations, actually decreases for some range of energies.

The atoms are not free to move from their positions on the wire. The only degree of freedom allowed to them is spin-flip: the spin of a given atom can point up or down. Notice that with this definition, E is zero when half of the spins are up and half are down. It is negative when the majority are down and positive when the majority are up. The lowest possible energy state, all the spins pointing down, gives the system a total energy of -NuB, and temperature of absolute zero.

There is only one configuration of the system at this energy, i. If we now add a quantum of energy, size uB, to the system, one spin is allowed to flip up. There are N possibilities, so the entropy is log N. The entropy is increasing quickly, and the temperature is rising as well. However, for this system, the entropy does not go on increasing forever. At this maximal energy, there is again only one microstate, and the entropy is again zero.