Mercury-in-glass thermometer the thermometer, the bulb is made to reach thermal equilibrium with a temperature standard such as an ice/water mixture, and then with another standard such as water/vapour, and the tube is divided into regular intervals between the fixed points. In principle, thermometers made of different material (e.g., coloured alcohol thermometers) might be expected to give different intermediate readings due to different expansion properties; in practice the substances used are chosen to have reasonably linear expansion characteristics as a function of true thermodynamic temperature, and so give similar results. The application of mercury (1714) and Fahrenheit scale (1724) for liquid-in-glass thermometers
Medical thermometer There are factors that make readings of this thermometer to some extent unreliable, for example faulty placement in the external ear canal by the operator, and wax blocking the canal. Such error-producing factors usually cause readings to be below the true value, so that a fever can fail to be detected. A temporal artery thermometer, which uses the infrared principle report temperature, were not very accurate and therefore caution should be used. The band thermometer is applied to the patient's brow. It is typically a band coated with different temperature-sensitive markings using plastic strip thermometer or similar technology; at a