Last updated: November 22, 2016. Feeling too hot? You'll be wanting to cool down, then.

Feeling too cold? You'll need to warm up. Our bodies are amazing, self-regulating mechanisms that can constantly adjust to keep their temperature within a whisker of 37°C (98.6°F). But the rest of the world isn't quite so helpful. If we want our homes to keep their temperature more or less constant, we have to keep switching our heaters on and off—or, alternatively, rely on clever gadgets called thermostats to do the job for us.

What are they and how do they work? Let's take a look inside! Photo: A simple, mechanical Honeywell thermostat mounted on a wall. This one is marked in degrees Celsius.

Once you've set the temperature, the thermostat is supposed to switch the heating on and off, as necessary, to keep the room more or less that warm. In practice, a thermostat like this doesn't switch on and off at a single temperature but cycles between a small range of temperatures either side of the value you set. What is a thermostat?

You might have a temperature control on a wall in your home to control the system but, although it's probably marked in degrees, it's not a. It's called a thermostat, a modern word based on two ancient Greek ones: thermo (meaning ) and statos (which means standing and is related to words like stasis, status quo, and static—meaning to stay the same). We can tell just from its name that a thermostat is something that 'keeps heat the same': when our home is too cold, the thermostat switches on the heating so things quickly warm up; once the temperature reaches the level we've set, the thermostat switches the heating off so we don't boil. Let's just be clear about the difference: a thermometer is something that measures the temperature; a thermostat is something that tries to maintain the temperature (keep it roughly the same).

Photo: An room thermostat showing a digital temperature reading (22.9°C). This one works slightly differently to the mechanical one in the top photo. Eminem Full Discography Torrent Download. The display is part of a central heating programmer with a built-in thermometer that constantly measures how hot the room is, then switches the heating on and off to keep it within 1°C of the temperature you've set.

How thermostats work So how does a thermostat work? Most things get bigger when they heat up and smaller when they cool down ( is a notable exception: it expands when it heats up and when it freezes too). Mechanical thermostats use this idea (which is called thermal expansion) to switch an electric circuit on and and off. The two most common types use bimetallic strips and gas-filled bellows. Bimetallic strips A traditional thermostat has two pieces of different bolted together to form what's called a bimetallic strip (or bimetal strip).

A thermostat exerts control by switching heating or cooling devices on or off. (69.8 °F), where a conventional thermostat would just start working at that time.

The strip works as a bridge in an electrical circuit connected to your heating system. Normally the 'bridge is down', the strip carries electricity through the circuit, and the heating is on. When the strip gets hot, one of the metals expands more than the other so the whole strip bends very slightly. Eventually, it bends so much that it breaks open the circuit. The 'bridge is up', the electricity instantly switches off, the heating cuts out, and the room starts to cool. But then what happens?

As the room cools, the strip cools too and bends back to its original shape. Sooner or later, it snaps back into the circuit and makes the electricity flow again, so the heating switches back on. By adjusting the temperature dial, you change the temperature at which the circuit switches on and off. Because it takes some time for the metal strip to expand and contract, the heating isn't constantly switching on and off every few seconds, which would be pointless (and quite irritating); depending on how well-insulated your home is, and how cold it is outside, it might take an hour or more for the thermostat to switch back on once it's switched off.