Although we know that the sensor from the manufacturer would be pretty much calibrated and ready to be installed on the car, I just wanted to see it working for myself under controlled and known conditions. The purpose of testing was also to see how close both sensors were in the temperature readings, which was more important as it is the difference between the two temperatures which would be used in calculations for the radiator test.
This was the very impromptu test setup that I made on my kitchen stove top. The tripods prevent the wires and sensors from touching the pot directly. Also there is a reference temperature probe for a '3rd party' point of view.
I used the lowest heat settings to reduce the heat coming from the sides of the pot. Thus it took a very very long time for the water to boil.
The temperature plateaued off at around 97 degC, not too far off from the reference temperature of about 98 degC. The difference between both sensors was also around +-1.5 degC. The graphical results are shown below.
You can see the very slow climb to the top, till it reached a small plateau. This was when I added a little more heat to give it a 'boost'. Then the heat was shut off and the pot allowed to cool on its own. The sharp drop was when I added extra water at room temperature to bring the temp down, and the final drop was when a couple of ice cubes were added in.
This graph shows the difference between both temperature sensors. If both were reading exactly the same, it would be a single straight line. The increasing thickness of the line shows that the difference between both sensors increase as the temperature increases. Still, they were not that far off each other.
This concludes the test. Hopefully next time, we will get to do some real testing.
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