What is the function of alcohol or mercury in the maximum and minimum thermometer ?

 

MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE: The definition of maximum is the largest number or highest number of something that is permissible or possible. MINIMUM TEMPERATURE: The lowest temperature recorded—diurnally, monthly, seasonally, or annually, or the lowest temperature of the entire record.maximum thermometer A thermometer that records the highest temperature to which it has been exposed (e.g. by allowing a rise of mercury past a restriction in the tube, but preventing the mercury's return on contraction). It is most commonly used to record maximum daily temperatures.

 

Maximum and minimum temperatures are measured using thermometers mounted inside a wooden box with slits, called Stevenson's screen, which is generally kept facing north. The maximum thermometer is mercury-in-glass — as the temperature rises, the mercury expands and moves freely up a constriction in the thermometer.In theory, the lower limit of temperature would be when all particles have zero energy. Heating the material gives the particles kinetic energy. The upper temperature limit should be when all of the object's particles were traveling at the speed of light.

 

Located outside of Las Vegas, the world's largest thermometer measures 134 feet high and commemorates the highest temperature ever recorded in North America: 134 degrees Fahrenheit. This temperature was measured in nearby Death Valley in 1934.