Thermometer

A thermometer is a device that measures temperature or temperature gradient, using a variety of different principles. The word thermometer is derived from two smaller word fragments: thermo from the Greek for heat and meter from Greek, meaning to measure. A thermometer has two important elements, the temperature sensor (e.g. the bulb on a mercury thermometer) in which some physical change occurs with temperature, plus some means of converting this physical change into a value (e.g. the scale on a mercury thermometer). Industrial thermometers commonly use electronic means to provide a digital display or input to a computer.

Thermometers can be divided into two groups according to the level of knowledge about the physical basis of the underlying thermodynamic laws and quantities. For primary thermometers the measured property of matter is known so well that temperature can be calculated without any unknown quantities. Examples of these are thermometers based on the equation of state of a gas, on the velocity of sound in a gas, on the thermal noise (see Johnson–Nyquist noise) voltage or current of an electrical resistor, and on the angular anisotropy of gamma ray emission of certain radioactive nuclei in a magnetic field.

Secondary thermometers are most widely used because of their convenience. Also, they are often much more sensitive than primary ones. For secondary thermometers knowledge of the measured property is not sufficient to allow direct calculation of temperature. They have to be calibrated against a primary thermometer at least at one temperature or at a number of fixed temperatures. Such fixed points, for example, triple points and superconducting transitions, occur reproducibly at the same temperature.

Internationally agreed temperature scales are based on fixed points and interpolating thermometers. The most recent official temperature scale is the International Temperature Scale of 1990. It extends from 0.65 K to approximately 1358 K (−272.5 °C to 1085 °C).

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Early history

  Various authors have credited the invention of the thermometer to Abū Alī ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), Cornelius Drebbel, Robert Fludd, Galileo Galilei or Santorio Santorio. But the thermometer was not a single invention, it was a development.

Philo and Hero of Alexandria knew of the principle that certain substances, notably air, expand and contract and described a demonstration, in which a closed tube partially filled with air had its end in a container of water.^[1] The expansion and contraction of the air caused the position of the water/air interface to move along the tube.

Similar devices used to show the hotness and coldness of the air with a tube in which the level of water is controlled by the expansion and contraction of the air, were developed by Abū Alī ibn Sīnā in the early 11th century,^[2][3] and by several European scientists in the 16th and 17th centuries, notably Galileo Galilei. As a result, devices were shown to produce this effect reliably, and the term thermoscope was adopted because you could see changes in sensible heat (the concept of temperature was yet to arise). The difference between a thermoscope and a thermometer is that the latter has a scale^[4]. Though Galileo is often said to be the inventor of the thermometer, what he produced was a thermoscope.

Galileo also discovered that objects (glass spheres filled with aqueous alcohol) of slightly different densities would rise and fall, which is nowadays the principle of the Galileo thermometer (shown). Today such thermometers are calibrated to a temperature scale.

The first clear diagram of a thermoscope was published in 1617 by Giuseppe Biancani: the first showing a scale and thus constituting a thermometer was by Robert Fludd in 1638. This was a vertical tube, with a bulb at the top and the end immersed in water. The level of water in the tube is controlled by the expansion and contraction of the air, so it is what we would now call an air thermometer.^[5]

The first person to put a scale on a thermoscope is variously said to be Franceso Sagredo^[6] or Santorio Santorio^[7] in about 1611 to 1613.

The word thermometer (in its French form) first appeared in 1624 in La Récréation Mathématique by J. Leurechon, who describes one with a scale of 8 degrees^[8].

The above instruments suffered from the disadvantage that they were also barometers, i.e. sensitive to air pressure. In about 1654 Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, made sealed tubes part filled with alcohol, with a bulb and stem, the first modern-style thermometer, depending on the expansion of a liquid, and independent of air pressure^[9]. Many other scientists experimented with various liquids and designs of thermometer.

However, each inventor and each thermometer was unique - there was no standard scale. In 1665 Christian Huygens suggested using the melting and boiling points of water as standards, and in 1694 Carlo Renaldini proposed using them as fixed points on a universal scale. In 1701 Isaac Newton proposed a scale of 12 degrees between the melting point of ice and body temperature. Finally in 1724 Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit produced a temperature scale which now (slightly adjusted) bears his name. He could do this because he manufactured thermometers, using mercury (which has a high coefficient of expansion) for the first time and the quality of his production could provide a finer scale and greater reproducibility, leading to its general adoption. In 1742 Anders Celsius proposed a scale with zero at the boiling point and 100 degrees at the melting point of water^[10], though the scale which now bears his name has them the other way around.

In 1866 Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt invented a clinical thermometer that produced a body temperature reading in five minutes as opposed to twenty^[11].

Types of thermometers

    Thermometers have been built which utilise a range of physical effects to measure temperature. Most thermometers are originally calibrated to a constant-volume gas thermometer. Temperature sensors are used in a wide variety of scientific and engineering applications, especially measurement systems. Temperature systems are primarily either electrical or mechanical, occasionally inseparable from the system which they control (as in the case of a mercury thermometer).

• Alcohol thermometer
• Bi-metal mechanical thermometer
• Electrical resistance thermometer
• Galileo thermometer
• Infrared thermometer
• Liquid Crystal Thermometer
• Medical thermometer (e.g. oral thermometer, rectal thermometer, basal thermometer)
• Mercury-in-glass thermometer
• Reversing thermometer
• Silicon bandgap temperature sensor
• Six's thermometer- also known as a Maximum minimum thermometer
• Thermistor
• Thermocouple
• Coulomb blockade thermometer

Calibration

Thermometers can be calibrated either by comparing them with other certified thermometers or by checking them against known fixed points on the temperature scale. The best known of these fixed points are the melting and boiling points of pure water. (Note that the boiling point of water varies with pressure, so this must be controlled.)

The traditional method of putting a scale on a liquid-in glass or or liquid-in-metal thermometer was in three stages:

• 1. Immerse the sensing portion in a stirred mixture of pure ice and water and mark the point indicated when it had come to thermal equilibrium.
• 2. Immerse the sensing portion in a steam bath at one standard atmosphere (101.325 kPa = 760 mm Hg) and again mark the point indicated.
• 3. Divide the distance between these marks into equal portions according to the temperature scale being used.

Other fixed points were used in the past are the body temperature (of a healthy adult male) which was originally used by Fahrenheit as his upper fixed point (96 degrees F to be a number divisible by 12) and the lowest temperature given by a mixture of salt and ice, which was originally the definition of 0 degrees Fahrenheit^[12]. (This is an example of a Frigorific mixture). As body temperature varies, the Fahrenheit scale was later changed to use an upper fixed point of boiing water at 212 degrees^[13].

These have now been replaced by the defining points in the International Temperature Scale of 1990, though in practice the melting point of water is more commonly used than its triple point, the latter being more difficult to manage and thus restricted to critical standard measurement. Nowadays manufacturers will often use a thermostat bath or solid block where the temperature is held constant relative to a calibrated thermometer. Other thermometers to be calibrated are put into the same bath or block and allowed to come to equilibrium, then the scale marked, or any deviation from the instrument scale recorded^[14]. For many modern devices calibration will be stating some value to be used in processing an electronic signal to convert it to a temperature .

Specialist uses of thermometers

• Candy thermometer
• Meat thermometer
• Medical thermometer

See also

• Timeline of temperature and pressure measurement technology
• Comparison of temperature scales
• Resistance Thermometer
• Thermistors
• Thermocouples
• Thermogenerator
• Silicon bandgap temperature sensor

Notes

References

• History Channel - Invention - Notable Modern Inventions and Discoveries
• About - Thermometer - Thermometers - Early History, Anders Celsius, Gabriel Fahrenheit and Thomson Kelvin.
• http://jnnp.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/74/10/1443
• The NIST Industrial Thermometer Calibration Laboratory

Further reading

• Middleton, W. E. K. (1966). A history of the thermometer and its use in meteorology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Reprinted ed. 2002, ISBN 0801871530.