Abstract: Temperature is one of the important parameters to characterize the change of macroscopic physical properties of objects. The precise determination of object temperature plays an important role in physics teaching and research. Michelson interference optical path is a common optical path, which has the characteristics of simple construction and high precision. In this paper, a temperature measurement method based on Michelson interference principle is proposed. The mechanism is that the change of temperature causes the change of refractive index and light path through the liquid, which leads to the change of interference fringe. By measuring five kinds of liquids such as clock oil, deionized water, anhydrous ethanol, glycerol and blended oil and linear fitting of experimental data, it is found that there is a linear relationship between the number of interference fringes moving and the change of temperature. The advantages of this method are as follows: the linear fitting relationship is good, and the correlation coefficient R2 values are greater than 0.999; the temperature can be adapted to 30 ~80 °C, and with the continuous expansion of the medium, this range can continue to expand; the relative error is about 4% under different temperature range. It can accurately reflect the real time value of temperature change. This study will help students understand temperature calibration and expand their knowledge of temperature measurement methods.

Key words: Michelson Interference, refractive index, temperature, temperature measuring instrument