11.3 Measurement of Temperature

A measure of temperature is obtained using a thermometer. Many physical properties of materials change sufficiently with temperature. Some such properties are used as the basis for constructing thermometers. The commonly used property is variation of the volume of a liquid with temperature. For example, in common liquid–in–glass thermometers, mercury, alcohol etc., are used whose volume varies linearly with temperature over a wide range.

Thermometers are calibrated so that a numerical value may be assigned to a given temperature in an appropriate scale. For the definition of any standard scale, two fixed reference points are needed. Since all substances change dimensions with temperature, an absolute reference for expansion is not available. However, the necessary fixed points may be correlated to the physical phenomena that always occur at the same temperature. The ice point and the steam point of water are two convenient fixed points and are known as the freezing and boiling points, respectively. These two points are the temperatures at which pure water freezes and boils under standard pressure. The two familiar temperature scales are the Fahrenheit temperature scale and the Celsius temperature scale. The ice and steam point have values
32 °F and 212 °F, respectively, on the Fahrenheit scale and 0 °C and 100 °C on the Celsius scale. On the Fahrenheit scale, there are 180 equal intervals between two reference points, and on the Celsius scale, there are 100.

A relationship for converting between the two scales may be obtained from a graph of Fahrenheit temperature (tF) versus celsius temperature (tC) in a straight line (Fig. 11.1), whose equation is

(11.1)