Surface Temperature Sensor - Tech tips with vernier

Measure. Analyze. Learn. This is the Vernier Surface Temperature Sensor. It's used to measure temperature. It's used in our physiology manual, engineering manual uses it. But, it can be used in a lot of different places where you want to measure temperature. It's actually the same basic device as our stainless steel temperature probe, in that it is a thermistor. And, it's resistance changes as a function of temperature. The main difference is that it's not inside a stainless steel protective sheath that the other one has. And so, it gives you some options. One, is that it actually responds much quicker to temperature changes. So, experiments that, for like physiology, you can look at the warming response of the nasal cavity with this. And so that, you might need that really rapid change. It's flexible, so you can tape it to your skin for that. Now, the other issue with that, is because it doesn't have the stainless steel sheath on it, that it's more susceptible to damage. So, you need to be a little careful with it. It's really designed for air and water only. We don’t advise that you put it into chemical solutions, acids, or what not. So, we'll collect a little data with this. And, I'm going to do this. I'm going to attach this into a straw, and just tape it onto there. And then I'm actually going just breath through the straw. And, we'll watch what happens as I breath in, and breath out. And you can see that rapid change in temperature as we do that. So, for the experiment that I would like to do, I need to be able to bend this, the tip. And that is one of the real advantages of this one. It allows me to bend the wires. And then, what I will do is attach this to a straw. So, I'm just going to ease that down into the straw. And then, I'll put a piece of tape, just to hold that in place for my experiment. And now, I'm ready to collect data. So, I'm going to plug it into the analog ports, an analog sensor. And, when it comes up here, we have our default setting here. So, we have 'Temperature' there in 'Channel 1'. And, if we look up to the upper right corner, we see our default collection parameters: 'Time Based', '2 samples/s', '180 seconds'. And, what you're seeing there, it turns out to be the same setting that you might find with any temperature device that we have. So, the stainless steel temperature probe also defaults to these same settings. Now, for the experiment that I want to do, I'm just going to shorten up my duration to 30 seconds. That'll give me enough time. I'll leave my sample rate the same. So, I'm just going to come under there, and we'll go here, and tap where it says '180', do '30' seconds -> 'Done' -> 'OK'. And now, we're ready to collect data. At this point I'm going to press the collect button. And then, I will just breath through the straw, and we can watch the temperature. And now, our data collection is complete. And, when the collection is complete, it auto-scales the graph. So, it makes it as large as possible given the data we've collected. So now, we can take a look at this and do a little analysis. One of the things we might be interested in is, "What's the maximum change in temperature, from the highest point to the lowest point?" So, we could do that, by just looking at the statistics. And so, I'll go to 'Analyze', and tap on 'Statistics', and check the box next to that. And then, we see here the minimum and the maximum temperature. So the minimum, 23.3 degrees Celsius and the maximum 33.4, so it looks like we have about a 10 degree delta between the highest temperature and the lowest temperature on the graph there. So, that lowest temperature would just be the outside air coming in, And, the higher temperature is my exhalation, and we're looking at that temperature. So, we've seen the flexibility of the Vernier Surface Temperature Sensor as its main attribute And so, we do need to use some care with it, because of the flexible wires. But, being able to use it in ways that you can't use other sensors is really key there. And, if you'd like to check out other uses for this, you can check out our website, and you can see what other people have done with this sensor.