One of my favorite sites has always been Snopes. They have some of the neatest little factoids, and they’re constantly adding new ones which I check via my RSS reader.
Today I learned something that I’ve never even heard of: You can tell the temperature by counting cricket chirps.
Growing up in Texas, I’m really surprised I never picked up on this little tidbit. Seems like a great thing to do as you drift off to sleep.
The exact formula is debated, but the Farmer’s Almanac suggests the following:
To convert cricket chirps to degrees Fahrenheit, count number of chirps in 14 seconds then add 40 to get the temperature.
One caveat to this whole thing is that it only works down to 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Any lower than that, and crickets don’t chirp. You can’t really blame them.
The whole thing was originally pioneered in 1897 by physicist Amos Dolbear who performed studies indicating that the frequency of cricket chirps could be predicted based on the temperature.
Somebody must have come along afterwards and realized that no one cares how often crickets are chirping, especially if they need a thermometer to predict it.
Being able to tell temperature, however, could be immensely useful if you were in the middle of nowhere with no thermometer, television, internet, or radio. Now you know how.
And now I could know this for???? I’m usually in the middle of nowhere so I won’t have to listen to tv,radio or internet. I know when I’m too hot or too cold. I suppose if I was disoriented and the crickets were quiet I would worry about hyperthermia. If I wasn’t disoriented.