Outdoor Thermometers

Welcome to outdoorthermometers.org! We are a site that prides itself on offering high quality outdoor thermometers, wireless weather stations, and cooking thermometers. The evolution of our concept of temperature is an interesting one, and one that dates back to ancient times. The Greeks theorized that there were four primary elements that made up the known universe. They were earth, water, air, and fire. The Greeks even had a crude atomic theory which stated that on a very small level everything was made of tiny bits. Fire burned because its tiny bits were pointy and could pierce into you.

Eventually the notion of temperature (fire) as an element gave way to the notion that temperature was a property that other elements had. Like hardness or softness, temperature could be observed only in other things. This led to the invention of the precursor to modern temperature reading: the thermoscope. The thermoscope came about during the very beginnings of the scientific revolution. It attempted to look at temperature in much the same way that a telescope could be used to look at far away things.

That method of investigation was soon supplanted by the first outdoor thermometer. There is some contention about who developed them, but for notorieties’ sake, we will discuss Galileo’s version. Galileo took a tube and filled it with water. He then made various alcohol mixtures, each with a slightly different density. He placed these within small glass bubbles, put those bubbles in the water, and then sealed off the tube. As the temperature rose, each mixture would expand, and each mixture would share the same density as the surrounding water at a different temperature.

So the Galilean thermometer would show a series of glass bulbs, with some collected at the top of a vial, some dwelling at the bottom, and one or two suspended in the middle of the tube. The suspended vials corresponded to the temperature around the instrument.

All thermometers make use of the fact that all known materials expand as they are heated, and contract when they are cooled. Ones such as Galileo’s, and later the mercury thermometer, made use of the expansion rate of liquids to show temperature. Others, such as most cooking thermometers, make use of the expansion rate of metal to show temperature. Metal, like a liquid, undergoes some changes as it heats, since metal is a solid, the amount of expansion it shows is much smaller than that of liquids. To show a meaningful level of expansion then, you need more metal than you would a liquid or gas.

Where metal outshines liquids and gasses is that it has a stable rate of expansion for a far larger range of temperatures than the other two do. That is why most cooking thermometers utilize a metal inside. The way to get around the quantity problem is for the metal to be fashioned into a long metal coil, which is fairly tightly wound. One end of the coil is fixed to the post (in a meat or bbq thermometer) and the other end is attached to the needle. As the temperature rises, the free end of the coil exerts pressure, moving the needle clockwise.

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