Internal pip 2 days ago. No external yet. Intervene?

[Ravynscroft]

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Got a baby!

Congrats!!!!!

 

[Pyxis]

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Got a baby!

 

[WVduckchick]

 

[aart]

WooHoo!

 

[lazy gardener]

Ah, red is alcohol...mercury is silver.

I comparison test (or calibrate, if you insist) my bator therms against a human oral thermometer(they have a regulated tolerance range for accuracy of 0.2-0.5(IIRC) degrees) in a cup of approx. 100F cup of water. Then take the notes already mentioned for accurate readings.

A quick google search turned up a few companies that still sell mercury thermometers. I assume they sell to the general public. I have 2 mercury thermometers left over from the days when they were in common use. I also use the common digital oral thermometers to calibrate my larger, easier to read bulb thermometer. I also calibrate in water to 100*. IMO it's not sensible to calibrate to 32*.

 

[Pyxis]

IMO it's not sensible to calibrate to 32*.

Why not? Serious question, not trying to pick a fight or anything. I use the 32 degrees method because when you melt ice in water like that, due to the way phase changing works, the water HAS to be 32 F due to the laws of physics, no guessing. The 100 degrees way you would need to have a thermometer you already know for sure is accurate to be able to check the other thermometers against. With the 32 F way, you don't need a thermometer you already know is accurate. That's why I suggest that way, but if there's a reason that doing it with 100 F water is better, I'd like to know so I can change what I recommend

 

[lazy gardener]

Why not? Serious question, not trying to pick a fight or anything. I use the 32 degrees method because when you melt ice in water like that, due to the way phase changing works, the water HAS to be 32 F due to the laws of physics, no guessing. The 100 degrees way you would need to have a thermometer you know to be accurate to be able to check the other thermometers against. With the 32 F way, you don't need an accurate thermometer. That's why I suggest that way, but if there's a reason that doing it with 100 F water is better, I'd like to know so I can change what I recommend

Pyxis, I agree with you that when calibrating to 32*, the ice bath will give you an accurate calibration at 32*. That's what the law of physics states. But... we are not incubating at 32*... I don't consider your questioning me about my rationale to be picking a fight at all!

I'm happy to tell you why I won't bother to calibrate to 32*. And, my thought process is based on my limited understanding, I have no other reason. This is my thought: If a bulb thermometer is accurate at 32*, that's just great. But, accuracy for good incubation needs to be at 100*. So... if a bulb thermometer has any variation in the diameter of the capillary that holds the liquid, the calibration may be accurate at 32*, but may be off at 100* where the temp reading is critical. Now, I don't know how digital thermometers work, but... I follow the same logic. If it's accurate at 32*, that does not necessarily mean that it will be accurate at 100*. Medical grade digital thermometers are guaranteed to be accurate to +/- .2*. Even the cheap ones are guaranteed to be accurate to .5*. So, I'll accept that guarantee, and continue to calibrate to 100*. I add my personal incubation experience as validation: After 4 years of incubation, my hatches have been spot on in terms of the majority of the hatch occurring on day # 21. The only time this has not been so is when I know that my temp has been off due to issues with thermostat, fan, and air temp regulation.

 

[Pyxis]

Pyxis, I agree with you that when calibrating to 32*, the ice bath will give you an accurate calibration at 32*. That's what the law of physics states. But... we are not incubating at 32*... I don't consider your questioning me about my rationale to be picking a fight at all!

I'm happy to tell you why I won't bother to calibrate to 32*. And, my thought process is based on my limited understanding, I have no other reason. This is my thought: If a bulb thermometer is accurate at 32*, that's just great. But, accuracy for good incubation needs to be at 100*. So... if a bulb thermometer has any variation in the diameter of the capillary that holds the liquid, the calibration may be accurate at 32*, but may be off at 100* where the temp reading is critical. Now, I don't know how digital thermometers work, but... I follow the same logic. If it's accurate at 32*, that does not necessarily mean that it will be accurate at 100*. Medical grade digital thermometers are guaranteed to be accurate to +/- .2*. Even the cheap ones are guaranteed to be accurate to .5*. So, I'll accept that guarantee, and continue to calibrate to 100*. I add my personal incubation experience as validation: After 4 years of incubation, my hatches have been spot on in terms of the majority of the hatch occurring on day # 21. The only time this has not been so is when I know that my temp has been off due to issues with thermostat, fan, and air temp regulation.

Makes sense, thanks for answering my question I usually calibrate to 32 F, and my hatches are on day 28, so for my thermometers it seems to work. I use digital ones made for reptiles and aquarium thermometers, both of which need to be very accurate or the animals you're using them for could die, so that probably helps, lol.

 

[aart]

I use digital ones made for reptiles and aquarium thermometers, both of which need to be very accurate or the animals you're using them for could die, so that probably helps

I question the accuracy of any thermometer other than a medical (human) thermometer.
Not sure if there is any evidence of manufacturing/quality control tolerance on therms for aquarium or reptile therms, but there is for medical therms.

Last year about this time I went in search for a good truly calibrated therm for comparing my incubating therms against. Visited a local place called 'Something Something Thermometer', they now mostly sell online and to various retail stores, but they used to support the local dairy industry and calibrated (actually adjusting temperature recording devices to meet qualified regulatory standards)thermometers for the local dairy's, which needed to met FDA guidelines. They confirmed my suspicions that most thermometers available in a retail setting vary greatly as to accuracy. We know that applies to incubator thermometers, as well as all the other therms out there hanging in the stores or available online.

So I moved on to the drug store and looked at medical thermometers. Some were actually labeled(the more expensive ones) with the tolerance(IIRC 0.2-0.5F), others were not labeled. I did some digging online and found some other evidence supporting these tolerances, I did not write down and/or save any of this info(GrrrSNAP). SMH. I plan on repeating that research and documenting it this time, put it in an article here, including explaining my pet peeve of incorrectly using the term 'calibrate' and it's derivatives.

Agrees that using 32F and ~212F(did you know that water boils at different temps at different sea levels? look it up) to test incubator therms is not the best idea, even tho ice and boiling are pretty much absolute standards, the range is too large for our target of ~100F. That's why I went to testing my bator therms against a human oral mercury therm as my standard.

I use the term 'standard' as defined here. When I worked in the pharmaceutical industry I worked with a lot of different calibrated measuring devices, they had a calibration lab in the plant I worked in and I learned a lot about accuracy and documenting it for the FDA.

Apologies to @tumnus for hijacking your thread.
BTW Tumnus was one of my favorite characters in Narnia.

 

[lazy gardener]

While we may have done a thread hijack, accurate thermometer is key to successful hatching. So this info is kind of topic appropriate. Aart, I'll be looking forward to your article.

Now, how bout them duckies????