"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it," said Mark Twain. A hundred years later, we still can't control the weather, but now we can predict the weather several days ahead, due in part to a better understanding of how weather works, and what we can learn about a physical system from temperature measurements.

Temperature is not energy, but tells us something about energy. The first step towards a better understanding of both temperature and energy is to study thermometers, just to see how they work.

Main pages in this section	Estimated time required
Using thermometers	30 minutes
Fahrenheit and Celsius	30 minutes
Temperature and energy	30 minutes
Science content: about temperature	30 minutes
Concluding the unit on temperature	30 minutes

Materials needed for this section

• Thermometers*
• warm and cool water (please see the section local materials ).
• Graph paper (see advice on graphing)

Next section:Thermal equilibrium
Plan ahead:  The first activity of the next section on "thermal equilibrium" involves a long wait, at least a few hours, ideally most of the day.  So set that up in the morning if you intend to go on to the thermal equilibrium unit immediately after this temperature unit.