What is a gallium thermometer?
What is a gallium thermometer?
Gallium thermometers contain a material called Galinstan which is a eutectic alloy of Gallium,Indium, and Tin which melts below the freezing point of water. This makes it useful for normal thermometer use where a mercury thermometer may be undesirable due to mercury’s toxicity.
Is Galinstan safe?
Galinstan alloy is non-toxic and can be safely cleaned in cases of breakage. Also, as opposed to mercury, disposal of Galinstan and Galinstan thermometers does not pose any serious environmental threat.
How can you tell mercury from Galinstan?
The non-toxic galinstan replaces mercury in thermometers; the tube interior must be coated with gallium oxide to prevent it from wetting the glass. Galinstan has higher reflectivity and lower density than mercury.
Are gallium thermometers good?
Gallium thermometers, like mercury thermometers, are considered the most accurateTheir main disadvantage is the long time required to obtain the correct measurement, in addition to being made of glass, so they are very fragile to any fall that may occur.
Are gallium thermometers accurate?
Results: For an error of ± 0.2°C and concordance with respect to fever, the gallium-in-glass thermometer gave the best results. The gallium-in-glass thermometer is less accurate after only 5 min in comparison with the reading taken after being placed for 12 min.
Are galinstan thermometers accurate?
Conclusions: Although both DT and GT had good specificity and positive predictive value compared with MT, GT had higher sensitivity and a lower rate of false-negative rates. Galinstan thermometer is more accurate in the measurement of body temperature compared with DT or MT.
Does galinstan bead up like mercury?
Mercury has high surface tension and stays in beads. Some thermometers are filled with Galinstan, which is silver-colored like mercury but is non-toxic. Mercury forms beads, Galinstan splats and sticks to surfaces.
Can you get mercury poisoning from broken thermometer?
A broken mercury-containing thermometer can be toxic if the vapors are inhaled. The risk of poisoning from touching or swallowing mercury from a broken thermometer is low if appropriate clean-up measures are taken.
