thermometer
/θəˈmɒmɪtə
/noun
An instrument for measuring and indicating temperature, typically one consisting of a narrow, hermetically sealed glass tube marked with graduations and having at one end a bulb containing mercury or alcohol which extends along the tube as it expands.Narrow-range mercury thermometers were used to measure sand surface temperature....
- Glass thermometers are suitable for measuring temperature at the Earth's surface but would be impractical at higher levels.
- Digital thermometers and alcohol-filled glass models are just as accurate as mercury ones, and many hospitals are already making the switch.
Derivatives
thermometric
- Microclimates can greatly upset thermometric readings of nonstationary thermometers.
- For personnel who are responsible for patients at risk of excessively low or high body temperatures, knowledge of various temperature sites and thermometric devices is imperative for provision of appropriate care.
- In 1848 Thomson produced a paper which set out to establish the basis of an absolute thermometric scale.
thermometrical
- The highest thermometrical reading in the main hatchway was 84 degrees on September 27th and the lowest was 45 degrees Fahrenheit on November 7th.
- The assiduity with which botanists have considered this subject of a thermometrical mean shows that more or less they have regarded it in the same light.
- Hooke studies the nature of air and its relationship to respiration and combustion, the laws of falling bodies, improvements to diving-bells, telegraphy, the weather, he sets the thermometrical zero at the freezing point of water, and also invents a machine for cutting gear wheels.
thermometry
- By contrast with infrared thermometry, thermal imaging allows information on the temperatures of all areas in a scene to be obtained simultaneously in one image.
- Smitz and associates compared rectal thermometry to infrared thermometry in elderly hospitalized patients to determine if there was agreement between the temperatures obtained via these two methods.
- Body temperature is therefore most accurately measured by an intravascular thermistor, but measurement by infrared ear thermometry or with an electronic probe in the rectum is an acceptable alternative.
Origin
Mid 17th century: from French thermomètre or modern Latin thermometrum, from thermo- 'of heat' + -metrum 'measure'.
warm from Old English:
Warm is an Old English word but can be traced right back to a root that was also the source of Greek thermos ‘hot’, which gave us thermometer (mid 17th century), thermostat (mid 19th century), and the Thermos flask (early 20th century). Cold hands, warm heart is a proverb first found in the early 20th century.