Question

fill in the blanks:
The temperature of boiling water cannot be measured by a ……… thermometer.

Answer 1

For a thermometer to be able to measure the temperature of the boiling water, the thermometer should have an upper range that will be higher than the boiling point of the water, the clinical thermometers are generally used in order to measure the temperature of the human body.

Complete answer:
If a thermometer has to measure the boiling temperature of water, it should have an upper range on its scale that should be equivalent to greater than the boiling temperature of the water. The boiling temperature of the water has been given as$100{}^\circ C$. A clinical thermometer will be usually used to measure the temperature of the human body. Therefore it should be calibrated to measure the general temperature of the human body. The scale on a clinical thermometer commonly ranges between $35{}^\circ C$ and $42{}^\circ C$. The normal human temperature of the body will be $37{}^\circ C$. Hence the clinical thermometer will be good for measuring variations in the temperature of the human body. However the upper limit is much lesser than the boiling temperature of water $100{}^\circ C$ and therefore it cannot be used for this use.
In order to measure the boiling temperature of the water, a laboratory thermometer is better as it is ranging from $-10{}^\circ C$ to $110{}^\circ C$ in general. Hence it can easily measure the boiling temperature of the water. Therefore the correct answer is a clinical thermometer.

Note:
Students should understand that each of the thermometers are produced keeping its purpose in mind. Hence even though a lab thermometer might be useful in measuring the variations in the human body temperature. It cannot be used for that purpose as the calibrations are done in such a way that it would be more difficult to read the variations in the temperature of the human body.