Wondering what to get your spouse for Xmas – here’s a serious suggestion.
One day many years ago I saw a cheap IR thermometer being sold at a shop and having used more expensive IR thermometers in industry, I couldn’t resist the temptation and I’m very glad I did.
But remarkably, whilst bought as a tool, even though it’s been around the house spotting heat leaks and investigating the climate (see below), by far it’s biggest use is in the kitchen (and let’s be honest, entertaining the children & pets).
One of the worst tasks in the Kitchen I know (except cleaning ovens) is trying to wash a toffee thermometer. For some reason, the toffee just sticks between the glass and scale and seems to be impossible to remove and any attempt to lever out the toffee will break the glass thermometer – which sooner or later will break anyway. Horrible things which I tried to avoid at all costs … except one day as a treat I made the children toffee coated popcorn. Once the children realised that I could make toffee popcorn, I could no longer deny it, and now there’s a regular demand for toffee-coated popcorn as we sit down as a family to watch a film.
But how do you make toffee without regularly checking the temperature? The problem with a standard thermometer is that it seems to be intentionally designed to to gather sugar crystals and sugar crystals are nightmare as they can precipitate the whole mass of molten sugar to crystalise.
But then I tried using the infra-red thermometer. Sceptical at first, because I was aware that emissivity would cause the temperature displayed to vary from the actual temperature I soon grew in confidence until I stopped using anything else. It is just wonderful. Point and hold and hey presto – the temperature is displayed. Nothing to wash, no peering at a half-submerged sugar-coated thermometer no chance of precipitating sugar crystals.
It’s also fantastic when frying. One can buy frying pans which supposedly tell you when they are “at temperature” but they are worse than useless. And a hot pan, particularly when deep frying is a serious hazard. So, it used to be – out with the cooking thermoter which just seemed to be designed to pick up bits of crud.
But an IR thermometer does the job in an instant. Point, press and the temperature is displayed.
I used to put it away, now it sits permanently on our microwave next to the cooker.
Checking your heating
If that hasn’t convinced you, then why not check out your building insulation. We have cavity walls. Sometimes the cavity is either not properly filled or the fill sags, or possibly, the fill “leaks out” under the floorboard. An easy way to check your house is to check the inside wall temperature on a cold day – areas lacking fill will show up as cold spots.
Likewise, you can spot other areas where insulation is poor and also where cold draughts are coming in.
Last but not least – personal investigations of the so called “greenhouse effect”.
Although a serious piece of kit is needed to measure actual “reflected heat” from CO2 a cheap IR thermometer will give a rough figure of “how warm” the sky is albeit based on a rather selected group of wavelengths.
But what is far more important, is that it will demonstrate how unimportant the minuscule effect of CO2 is compared to the massive changes that occur between cloudy and clear nights.
Another potential use:
- Body fat insulate the body and so will be cooler than areas without fat.
- Teenage girls – show them how cold exposed skin is.
- Cats – ours has a laser pointer – cats go wild chasing the spot.
- “I’m too ill to go to school”: use for a very quick “no you’re not”. Get your child to open their mouth and point the laser in to take reading. You will have a very quick reading of temperature which (unless they are really ill) will be remarkably low (Note: you’ve got evaporative cooling on your side!! – and on a serious point, if a child might be ill, why on earth do people stick a thermometer in their mouth which could potentially be contaminated from the last ill person)
