Measure. Analyze. Learn.
This is the Vernier Thermocouple.
It's used to measure really wide ranges of temperature change.
The real advantage of this is, if you wanted to measure
something as high as a flame temperature,
you can actually do this.
The way that this thing operates is that
this is the actual sensor wire.
And, it ends up being plugged into the thermocouple.
And this wire is replaceable, if something happens to it.
So, you just plug it in there.
And then, the sensitive part of the detector
is right down here at the end.
And, the way a thermocouple works is,
you've got a junction of dissimilar metals.
And, when you expose that to a temperature,
then the device actually generates a voltage.
And, the voltage is dependent upon the actual temperature.
Now, this one actually has a built-in internal reference.
Some thermocouples, you actually have two wires,
and you have to put one in a reference temperature.
This one has a built-in ice reference inside it,
so you don't need that.
And, we'll just do a quick data collection.
I'm actually going to put this into a flame,
and we'll take a look at the flame temperature.
You can also go down as low as liquid nitrogen.
So, you could actually put it into liquid nitrogen.
So, it's minus 200 degrees C, to 1400 degrees C
is the operational range.
So, let's collect some data.
It's an analog sensor,
so I need to plug it into on of the analog ports like 'Channel 1'.
And, we see our meter reading there.
And, if you look at the upper right corner of the screen.
We see the default collection parameters, which is:
'Time Based', '2 samples/s', '180 seconds'.
This is the same setting that you would find with
any of our temperature sensors, or probes.
They all default to a three minute time graph.
Now, for my experiment, I don't need that much time.
So, I'm going to shorten this up to 30 seconds.
So, I'll just tap there, change my duration to '30' seconds. - 'OK'
We're ready to collect data, so I'll press the collect button,
and hold it into the flame.
Now, we have our data, and so, we can take a look at it.
At this point is where I actually put
the thermocouple tip into the flame.
So, it begins to rise pretty rapidly.
And then, it begins to level off up there.
And so, it gets to some constant temperature.
We might be interested in that.
And then, at this point, I actually turned the flame off.
And, we see that it starts to cool back off again.
For the analysis on this. Probably we'd be interested in,
"What was that maximum temperature?"
"How hot was it in the flame?"
So, this is a great use of the stats function.
So, I'll go to 'Statistics', click there.
And, the maximum temperature was
877.3 degrees Celsius at 15.5 seconds.
The Vernier Thermocouple, it's used for
really, really wide ranges of temperature measurement,
down to 200 below 0 Celsius, up to 1400 degrees.
So, down to liquid nitrogen,
or if you wanted to place this into a flame or an oven,
this would be the sensor you would use for that.
For other uses, you might take a look at the Vernier web site.