T³ Europe webinar series 2022

Webinar 'Fahrenheit'

Ian Galloway

May 24, 17.00 hrs European central time

Temperature, what it means and how we measure it

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was born 24 May 1686 in Gdansk (Danzig). He spent most of his life in the Netherlands inventing the mercury thermometer and designing his famous Fahrenheit scale of temperature. His scale was superseded by that of Anders Celsius which in turn was replaced in scientific communities by the Kelvin temperature scale. Fahrenheit still left a legacy (to be revealed) which is present in many kitchens today!

Rising temperature is a symptom of both global warming and fevers in mammals. Understanding temperature is therefore an important part of all school science curricula and this talk will look at how temperature scales have been constructed using the ice and salt mix as an interesting phenomenon on which to hook students' learning.

Measuring and recording temperatures can be carried out with the TI-Nspire™ Lab Cradle, Vernier EasyTemp, TI-Innovator™ Hub or the BBC micro:bit, the choice is yours! Temperature lends itself to building scale conversion algorithms or writing programs to control thermostats. The behavior of modern refrigerators can be easily explored using a datalogger and we will look at some experimental results.

I will wrap up with the Vernier Infra-Red thermometer and consider how it might be used to provide a very striking demonstration of the importance of the albedo effect for global warming, not to mention its use for measuring body temperature during the Covid pandemic!

 

Watch the webinar recording here!