The Learning Center

For professionals and other serious users of ThermoWorks products, here you'll find a growing collection of technical articles, tips, videos and other resources to help you do your job. Find info on instrumentation, sensors, measurement and control, calibration and a variety of commercial applications.
Thermoblog
Boiling Point Calculator
Food Safety Mistakes
Glossary of Terms
HACCP
Infrared Emissivity Table
Proper Ice Bath

Featured Reads

Still Using Paper Temperature Logs?
Still Using Paper Temperature Logs? Paper temperature logs have been used for decades to track HACCP temps. In today’s age of connectivity and technology, restaurant owners who embrace new HACCP innovations are realizing significant cost savings, improvements in data accuracy, and faster more immediate corrective actions to protect their brands. So...what’s stopping your organization from moving to a paperless HACCP solution? Below we outline a couple of the latest innovations that are making the transformation to a paperless HACCP checklist painless and efficient. Chose the one that’s right for your... Read Now
Health Inspector Tools
Health Inspector Tools Powerful Tools for the Health Inspector Toolkit: Thermapen® IR and DishTemp® If you are a health inspector tasked with checking and verifying HACCP and other Food Code compliance in commercial kitchens, you know that your success in the field depends largely on the utility, reliability, and portability of your instrumentation. Whether you’re auditing small franchises, big conglomerates, medical or correctional food service operations, or food manufacturing or processing plants, you need food safety tools that are… • Portable • Accurate • Calibrated • Rugged and durable •... Read Now
Three Ways to Prepare for a Health Inspection
Three Ways to Prepare for a Health Inspection Whether you're in food processing, industrial manufacturing or at the operations level of restaurant management, health inspections happen. They usually occur two or three times a year - depending on the industry, and in many cases, can make or break the future of your business. Though it may be tempting to put off certain repairs or overlook a few minor health violations in the hopes that inspectors will not visit today, the better practice is to treat every day as the day... Read Now
Emissivity
Emissivity Not all surfaces are created equal. Depending on what you’re pointing your infrared gun at you’re likely to get variations in emitted infrared energy. This variation is called emissivity. What is Emissivity? Emissivity is a measure of a material’s ability to emit infrared energy. It is measured on a scale from just about 0.00 to just below 1.00. Generally, the closer a material’s emissivity rating is to 1.00, the more that material tends to absorb reflected or ambient infrared energy and emit only its own infrared radiation. Most organic... Read Now
The Temperature Danger Zone: What It Is and How to Avoid It
The Temperature Danger Zone: What It Is and How to Avoid It What is the Temperature Danger Zone The USDA calls the range between 40°F and 140°F (4°C and 60°C) the “Temperature Danger Zone” (TDZ) because it is the range in which harmful bacteria multiply quickly. What do we mean by “multiply quickly?” We mean doubling in as little as every 20 minutes. If that doesn’t sound super fast to you, consider this: If you have just 150 salmonella bacteria floating on a soup, in 20 minutes there could be... Read Now
Best Practices for Food Applications
Best Practices for Food Applications Because food-borne bacteria usually land on the surface of foods first, infrared thermometers can be very useful for spot checking the holding temperatures of plated foods, serving areas, buffets and warming trays. But critical food safety temperatures (like 41°F [5°C] and 140°F [60°C]) should always be verified with an internal probe. Fortunately many infrared thermometers (like the ThermoWorks IRK, IR-IND and IR-PRO models) come with attachable type K probes that serve this very purpose. Also, since infrared thermometers only measure surface temperatures, they are not... Read Now