Medical Thermometers

Medical Thermometers

Medical Thermometers
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 4 to 6
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	9.47

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		covert, distinguish, stuffy, unreliable, introduction, overall, therefore, continuous, medical, affected, temperature, virus, perhaps, aggravate, numerical, pacifier
	content words:		Santorio Santorio, Galileo Galilei, Gabriel Fahrenheit, Sir Thomas Allbutt, Theodore Hannes Benzinger

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Medical Thermometers
By Jennifer Kenny

¹     Thermometers measure temperature. Perhaps it's the air temperature outdoors. Perhaps it's the water temperature in the ocean. In the case of a medical thermometer, it is used to measure the temperature of the human body.

²     Thermometers have been around for a long time. The first thermometers were called thermoscopes. Several inventors contributed to their overall development. Santorio Santorio was the leader in putting a numerical scale on an instrument. In 1593, Galileo Galilei invented a very basic water thermometer. The inventor of the first mercury thermometer was Gabriel Fahrenheit in 1714, followed by the introduction of his temperature scale in 1724. In 1867, Sir Thomas Allbutt introduced the first thermometer meant to take the temperature of a person. Much later, Theodore Hannes Benzinger invented the ear thermometer.

³     There are different kinds of medical thermometers. For a long time, people only used mercury-in-glass thermometers. The mercury inside the thermometer was attached to a small tube. As the temperature rose, the mercury expanded and flowed up the tube allowing one to read the scale printed on the thermometer. The risen mercury was held in place by a constriction in the neck. It needed to be reset by swinging the instrument sharply. In the 1990s, it was determined that mercury was a risk. It could break, spilling the dangerous mercury. Therefore, other thermometers became more practical.

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