> Dick Adams wrote:
> [...]
> A more elegant solution for studying oven temperature is a
> thermocouple thermometer calibrated at two points, like
> melting ice in distilled water at known atmospheric pressure,
> and melting pure metal, like bismuth or tin. Of course, you
> would probably want also to use a data-logging device if
> you went that far.
> [...]

If you want to be fanatic about it [not that anyone on this list would
do that ;-) ] you can order an Omega Engineering catalog and find
multichannel thermocouple dataloggers with certified stainless-encased
probes for $200 US up to $3000.

But the interesting thing to me is that as far as I can tell the
$50-$100 thermocouple thermometers being sold in kitchen stores today
are basically the industrial/lab thermometers of 10 years ago with less
rugged packaging and fewer features. I know back in the 80s we would
have been quite happy in our process plant chem lab with the units that
the kitchen catalogs sell for $50 today.

sPh