I'm pretty sure I've made this confession before, but if I haven't, here goes: I'm a bit of nut when it comes to temperature. Let's just say that I have an exceptional temperature curiosity. I have thermometers of one sort or another spread from one end of my home to the other and I seem to be checking them constantly. I even found a useful little atomic travel clock with a thermometer built in; I can keep track of the exact time when I travel and monitor the environment at the same time ― I like that. In science and industry, one of the most popular methods of measuring temperature is with a thermocouple. They're inexpensive and fairly accurate. They're easy to use, but the process of using them properly is not necessarily very simple. Let's back up a bit... a thermocouple is constructed by joining two dissimilar metal wires at one end (see Figure 1). A voltage will be developed between the joined and open end that is proportional to the temperature difference between the two ends. This is called the Seebeck voltage, named after Thomas Seebeck, who discovered the affect in 1821.
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