Crossword clues for thermometer
thermometer
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Thermometer \Ther*mom"e*ter\ (th[~e]r*m[o^]m"[-e]*t[~e]r), n. (Physics) An instrument for measuring temperature, founded on the principle that changes of temperature in bodies are accompanied by proportional changes in their volumes or dimensions.
Note: The thermometer usually consists of a glass tube of capillary bore, terminating in a bulb, and containing mercury or alcohol, which expanding or contracting according to the temperature to which it is exposed, indicates the degree of heat or cold by the amount of space occupied, as shown by the position of the top of the liquid column on a graduated scale. See Centigrade, Fahrenheit, and R['e]aumur. [1913 Webster] To reduce degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Centigrade, substract 32[deg] and multiply by 5/9; to reduce degrees Centigrade to degrees Fahrenheit, multiply by 9/5 and add 32[deg].
Air thermometer, Balance thermometer, etc. See under Air, Balance, etc.
Metallic thermometer, a form of thermometer indicating changes of temperature by the expansion or contraction of rods or strips of metal.
Register thermometer, or Self-registering thermometer, a thermometer that registers the maximum and minimum of temperature occurring in the interval of time between two consecutive settings of the instrument. A common form contains a bit of steel wire to be pushed before the column and left at the point of maximum temperature, or a slide of enamel, which is drawn back by the liquid, and left within it at the point of minimum temperature.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1630s, from French thermomètre (1620s), coined by Jesuit Father Jean Leuréchon from Greek thermos "hot" (see thermal) + metron "measure" (see meter (n.2)). An earlier, Latinate form was thermoscopium (1610s). The earliest such device was Galileo's air-thermometer, invented c.1597. The typical modern version, with mercury in glass, was invented by Fahrenheit in 1714. Related: Thermometric; thermometrical.
Wiktionary
n. An apparatus used to measure temperature.
WordNet
n. measuring instrument for measuring temperature
Wikipedia
A Thermometer is a device that measures temperature or a temperature gradient. A thermometer has two important elements: (1) a temperature sensor (e.g. the bulb of a mercury-in-glass thermometer) in which some physical change occurs with temperature, and (2) some means of converting this physical change into a numerical value (e.g. the visible scale that is marked on a mercury-in-glass thermometer). Thermometers are widely used in industry to control and regulate processes, in the study of weather, in medicine, and in scientific research.
There are various principles by which different thermometers operate. They include the thermal expansion of solids or liquids with temperature, and the change in pressure of a gas on heating or cooling. Radiation-type thermometers measure the infrared energy emitted by an object, allowing measurement of temperature without contact. Most metals are good conductors of heat and they are solids at room temperature. Mercury is the only one in liquid state at room temperature, and has high coefficient of expansion. Hence, the slightest change in temperature is notable when it's used in a thermometer. This is the reason behind mercury being used in thermometer.
Some of the principles of the thermometer were known to Greek philosophers of two thousand years ago. The modern thermometer gradually evolved from the thermoscope with the addition of a scale in the early 17th century and standardisation through the 17th and 18th centuries.
Usage examples of "thermometer".
Overhead hung an ordinary tell-tale compass, and compactly placed on other parts of the wall were barometers, thermometers, barographs, and, in fact, practically every instrument that the most exacting of aeronauts or Space-explorers could have asked for.
A slight rise of both barometer and thermometer tells us that at last we are on the eve of the change we have been longing for.
I examined these instruments and discovered that they possessed radical blemishes: the barometer had no hand but the brass pointer and the ball of the thermometer was stuffed with tin-foil.
No thermometer verified this, but a few weeks later the symptoms of nausea and hypersensitive noses did.
This usually happened, and I palpated the snarling bundle of white hair and went over him with stethoscope and thermometer.
Most of these people were not even mentally unwell, but their tendency to choke at dinner time meant that the piece of medical equipment he had used most was not a stethoscope or a thermometer but a probang, an instrument for pushing stuck food down the oesophagus, something he had been instructed to carry at all times.
The heat laboratory is equipped for the calibration of the thermometers and pyrometers, and electrical and other physical apparatus used by the various sections of the Technologic Branch.
Garner and Zubov replaced the sampling bottles on Medusa and recalibrated her thermometers, salinometers, and light meters.
On the contrary, Captain Nemo went himself to test the temperature in the depths of the sea, and his thermometer, placed in communication with the different sheets of water, gave him the required degree immediately and accurately.
This space, intended to contain a few comfortable lounge chairs and perhaps a wet bar, was stuffed with meteorological equipment: dropsonde console, anemometer, barometer, gradient thermometer, three separate radar screens, and real-time satellite monitoring gear.
Doc Pol poked, prodded, tapped the tiny chest, shone lights into eyes and ears, managed to insert a thermometer abaft the twitching tail, and peered down the pink throat while Methuselah tried earnestly to bite him.
It was at the beginning of October, but at Valentia the thermometer marked twenty degrees Reaumur in the shade.
Christmas in Bourke, the metropolis of the great pastoral scrubs and plains, five hundred miles west, with the thermometer one-hundred-and-something-scarey in the shade.
And it had been his wife who had awakened him briefly a while ago to kiss him good-bye, rather than one of the nurses arriving abruptly to strap a sphygmomanometer around his arm, insert a thermometer under his tongue, or stick a clip on his finger to check his oxygen absorption.
Thermometers, drugs, sphygmometers, the whole paraphernalia came back into sight and with them the resident physician.