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You boil water but you don't directly experience the temperature. All you see is a number that starts near zero and counts to 100. If water boiled at twice the temperature and had half the specific heat you wouldn't notice it.

Ice temperature, room temperature, body temperature, these are things you can directly experience and use as a high quality reference point. For the average person the boiling point of water is just 'hot', with a rough idea of how long it takes their particular heater to get there.



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