[Avodah] reading thermometers on shabbos

[T613K at aol.com]

From: Gershon Seif _gershonseif at yahoo.com_ (mailto:gershonseif at yahoo.com) 


>>  My understanding is one may not set up a thermometer on shabbos as it 
falls  under the issur of medida.

But may one read a thermometer that was put in  its place before shabbos? 
ie. a large weather thermometer hanging in the  backyard <<

 
 
 
>>>>>
Assuming that "reading" the thermometer involves nothing but looking  at 
it, without touching it or doing anything to it, what could possibly be the  
problem?  You can't hang a clock on the wall on Shabbos or plug it in, but  
would anyone think there was any problem with /looking/ at the clock to tell 
the  time?
 
You asked about ambient temperature but reminded me of a more  practical 
problem, viz., taking a /person's/ temperature on Shabbos.  
 
During our long infertility saga, most of the shailos that arose had  to do 
with Shabbos.  If  you take your temperature every morning  immediately 
upon awakening and plot the temps on a graph, you can see that your  
temperature is relatively low during the first two weeks of your cycle  and relatively 
high the last two weeks.  In mid-cycle, there is a  distinct dip one day 
followed the next day by a definite rise in  temperature (with the temperature 
remaining high for the rest of the  month).  The dip and rise signal the day
 of ovulation, a critical  piece of information if you want to try to get 
pregnant and especially if you  want to check whether you are getting to the 
mikva too late in your cycle,  which might be preventing pregnancy.  
 
The question was, could you take your temperature on Shabbos?   Missing one 
day would ruin the usefulness of the graph.  The answer we were  given was 
that yes, I could take my temp on Shabbos (recording it on the graph  could 
wait till after Shabbos of course).  We were using an old-fashioned  mercury 
thermometer.  Those are hard to come by these days.  I don't  know what 
would be the psak with a new-fangled battery-operated thermometer with  an LED 
display and a beep-beep signal.
 
 
 
--Toby  Katz
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