thermometer
Sign in to savethumb|Mercury thermometer (mercury-in-glass thermometer) for measurement of room temperature.
AI overview
A thermometer is a device used to measure temperature, such as the air in a room. It matters because knowing temperature helps us stay comfortable, monitor health, and make decisions about heating and cooling our environments.
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Article
32 sectionsContents
- A standard scale
- History
- Ancient developments
- Philo of Byzantium
- Hero of Alexandria
- First temperature scale with a fixed point
- Late Renaissance developments
- Thermoscope
- Air thermometer
- Coining of ''thermometer''
- Sealed liquid-in-glass thermometer
- Early attempts at standardization
- Precision thermometry
- Registering
- Physical principles of thermometry
- Thermometric materials
- Constant volume thermometry
- Radiometric thermometry
- Primary and secondary thermometers
- Calibration
- Precision, accuracy, and reproducibility
- Indirect methods of temperature measurement
- Applications
- Nanothermometry
- Cryometer
- Medical
- Food and food safety
- Environmental
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- External links
thumb|Mercury thermometer (mercury-in-glass thermometer) for measurement of room temperature.
A thermometer is a device that measures temperature (the hotness or coldness of an object) or temperature gradient (the rates of change of temperature in space). A thermometer has two important elements: (1) a temperature sensor (e.g. the bulb of a mercury-in-glass thermometer or the pyrometric sensor in an infrared thermometer) in which some change occurs with a change in temperature; and (2) some means of converting this change into a numerical value (e.g. the visible scale that is marked on a mercury-in-glass thermometer or the digital readout on an infrared model). Thermometers are widely used in technology and industry to monitor processes, in meteorology, in medicine (medical thermometer), and in scientific research.