Suppose your thermometer is off by 0.5 oC i.e. it reads values that are 0.5 oC higher.?

Question

Suppose your thermometer is off by 0.5 C i.e. it reads values that are 0.5 C higher. How would this affect the results in this experiment?

Answer 1

Well, it totally depends on the kind of experiment you are doing. If you are trying to determine a melting point or a boiling point, it is obvious that the value you read will not be the actual temperature of the sample.

If you are trying to measure a Delta T (change in temperature) then it probably wouldn't matter at all, as long as the thermometer is consistently 0.5 degrees high.