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Well its rather easy to make your own thermometer using the Celsius scale. Put quicksilver in a small glass tube and put it outside. When water starts to freeze
by Schweigi 12y ago
Well its rather easy to make your own thermometer using the Celsius scale. Put quicksilver in a small glass tube and put it outside. When water starts to freeze mark the current position with 0. Drop it in boiling water and mark it with 100. Evenly distribute now 98 markings between the two existing ones and voila you have just made your own thermometer :)
- raldi 12y agoEvenly distributing 98 markings is hard. Evenly distributing 64 is easy -- just halve the range six times. That's why the distance from freezing water to body temperature is 64 Fahrenheit degrees.
- Schweigi 12y agoI don't think its advisable to use my self-made quicksilver thermometer for any kind of body temperature measurement.
- XorNot 12y agoWhich makes no difference because you're eyeballing it to start with. You can just as easily divide the 0-100 range in half a bunch of times. Your thermometer is not achieving <1 degree accuracy. Of course if you have a tool to accurately measure halves, then you can also measure any other division you care to use.
- BlackAura 12y agoExcept... Freezing point of water: 32°F Average human body temperature (oral): 98.2°F So that's 66.2°F, not 64°F. Those two temperatures were the original reference points for the Fahrenheit scale, and body temperature was defined as 96°. The current definition is relative to the melting point of ice (32°F), and the boiling point of water at standard atmospheric pressure (212°F, which is exactly 180°F higher than the freezing point). Except now body temperature is 98.2°F instead of 96°. If you want a thermometer calibrated in Fahrenheit, you have exactly the same problem as you do with Celsius. You just have to put 178 markings between the two reference points, rather than 98.