Question by rawrr: Can I use a meat thermometer for measuring the temperature of oil?
I’m making onion rings, but I don’t have a candy thermometer. At my grocery store, they all only go up to something like 250 degrees F (which is ridiculous because I need it to go up to 350). And the only one that goes higher is super expensive.
My meat thermometer goes past 350. Can I just use that to measure the temperature of the oil? Thanks.
Question by twinhood: How accurate is a thermometer temperature reading under the armpit?
I needed to take my baby’s temperature and placed a thermometer under her armpit. How accurate is the reading of the thermometer when you use this method?
Best answer:
Answer by Kaylyn Amunrud In general, an armpit reading will be about 1/2 to 1 degree F lower than the oral reading.
Question by Chloe: What type of thermometer should you buy to take a dog’s temperature and what is the gentlest way to do it?
My dog has some health issues and recommended that I check my dog’s temperature daily and bring her in if it is not normal. I forgot to ask what type of thermometer to get! Will a regular pediatrician rectal thermometer work? Thanks.
Best answer:
Answer by Heather I used to work for a breeder of show and pet quality dogs. When a dam was pregnant we had to take her temp twice a day.
We did this with a few simple tools. An electric thermometer (the kind you would stick under your tongue), some Vaseline, and some rubber gloves.
Dip the thermometer in the Vaseline, and get a decent coating on it.
Put your rubber gloves on.
Hold the dog by the base of it’s tail.
Gently insert the thermometer into the dog’s rectum being careful to not push it in too deep. Keep them still until it beeps and gives you a reading, and then gently remove it.
Voila!
It’s gross to do, but you gotta do what you gotta do. =-)
Question by Saleha Ali: You put a thermometer in a pot of hot water and record thee reading. What temperature?
You put a thermometer in a pot of hot water and record thee reading. What temperature
have you recorded?
I. The temperature of the water;
II. The temperature of the thermometer;
III. An equal average of the temperature of the water and thermometer;
IV. A weighted average of the water and thermometer, with more emphasis on the
temperature of the water.
V. A weighted average of the water and thermometer, with more emphasis on the
temperature of the thermometer.
Explain your above selected answer as well.
Best answer:
Answer by dogsafire IV. A weighted average of the water and thermometer, with more emphasis on the
temperature of the water.
Before you place the thermometer in the hot water it is at room temperature. Despite the fact that thermometer manufacturers try to keep the mass of thermometers small so that they can react quickly, a thermometer still has sufficient mass that it must be heated to the temperature of its surroundings before it can provide an accurate temperature. During that time period, you will some combination of the temperature of the thermometer and the temperature of the water. But because there is much more mass in the water than the thermometer, the reading will be weighted toward the water’s temperature (unless you take a reading very, very quickly after putting the thermometer into the water, in which case, the thermometer’s temperature will matter more than the water’s temperature)
UPDATE: We won the IEEE 125 contest! www.ieee125.org Thanks for your votes! This is our entry in the ieee’s 125th anniversary “Engineering Your World” video contest: www.ieee125.org which asks for “short videos demonstrating their use of science, engineering and technology to make their living spaces more livable, fun, convenient or futuristic.” For a longer version of this video, see: www.youtube.com
To passionate chefs, cooking is an art. Knowing exactly when a cut of meat is cooked to perfection requires knowing your meat and your grill. But with a little bit of technology, we can build a digital meat thermometer, and use digital signal processing techniques to get a much faster response. This video explains how we can use the predictably slow heat transfer inside the temperature probe to mathematically model the sensor, and ultimately get a much faster response, with a little bit microcontroller computing power! For more information check out the tutorial at www.nerdkits.com
