Experiments have shown that mercury thermometers of fused quartz do not show zero changes exceeding one or two hundredths of a degree after heating to 600° C, while heating for a month at 100° C did not produce a change greater than 0.001 deg C. Thermometers and observing equipment have been designed to take advantage of this stability, and observations on a thermometer ranged 0° to 28° C show a reproducibility of reading to within ±0.0007 deg C over a period of twelve months.
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Moreau et al. (1957) studied this question.
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