What the Thermophysical Property Community Should Know About Temperature Scales

Published

September 3, 2021

Author(s)

Allan H. Harvey

Abstract

Temperature scales have evolved through many decades to more accurately represent the thermodynamic temperature. This creates challenges for those who study thermophysical properties, because the temperatures used for literature data may not correspond to the latest international scale. The resulting differences are small, but not necessarily negligible, especially for reference-quality work. Here, we describe the temperature scales that might be encountered in the literature and give guidance for converting them to the International Temperature Scale of 1990 (ITS-90). We pay special attention to the liquid-helium scales used for cryogenic work, where a potentially confusing number of different scales has been used. Advice is given for avoiding common mistakes in dealing with temperature scales in the context of thermophysical property data, including the responsibility of experimentalists to fully document their reported temperatures and the responsibility of modelers to document their handling of any temperature-scale issues.

Citation

International Journal of Thermophysics

Volume

42

Issue

12

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10765-021-02915-9

Local Download

Keywords

ITS-90, temperature, temperature scales, thermophysical properties

Citation

Harvey, A. (2021), What the Thermophysical Property Community Should Know About Temperature Scales, International Journal of Thermophysics, [online], https://doi.org/10.1007/s10765-021-02915-9, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=932828 (Accessed October 9, 2025)