Simple, inexpensive attainment and measurement of very high cooling and warming rates.

ABSTRACT

We have developed a simple, inexpensive system (<$300 US) for measuring cooling and warming rates of small (∼ 0.1µl) aqueous samples at rates as high as 10(5)°C/min. The measurement system itself, can track rates approaching one million°C/min. For temperature sensing, a Type T thermocouple with 50µm wire was used. The thermocouple output voltage was read with an inexpensive USB based digital oscilloscope interfaced to a laptop computer, and the raw data were processed with MS Excel.